


Mr. Brightside and the Atomic Bomb

by olivieblake



Category: Original Work, The Killers (Band)
Genre: Based on The Killers' discography, F/F, F/M, I wanted to write a musical and it turns out it's also a murder mystery, M/M, Multi, Other, Song: Mr. Brightside (The Killers), also not at all like mamma mia, basically mamma mia but for the killers, the heart simply wants what it wants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 129,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23782285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivieblake/pseuds/olivieblake
Summary: A package sent to Julian Kinney shortly before his estranged sister's death reveals that Sam has spent the last three years at a conservatory for students with magical capabilities. To unravel the mystery of Sam’s death, Julian will have to follow her path in life, which means finding himself entangled—perhaps dangerously—with everyone his sister once loved. COMPLETE.
Comments: 133
Kudos: 92





	1. Smile Like You Mean It

**Mr. Brightside and the Atomic Bomb**

**_Summary:_ ** _A package sent to Julian Kinney shortly before his estranged sister's death reveals that Sam has spent the last three years at a conservatory for students with magical capabilities. To unravel the mystery of Sam’s death, Julian will have to follow her path in life, which means finding himself entangled—perhaps dangerously—with everyone his sister once loved._

 **_a/n:_ ** _These characters are mine, but the work is based on the discography of The Killers. Essentially, this work is to The Killers what Mamma Mia is to ABBA except instead of three possible dads there are three possible motives for murder and a buffet of sexual preferences. Basically I asked myself what I felt excited about writing during these quarantine times, and the answer was… this._

* * *

“Hey Jules, it’s… it’s me. Long time, I know. Oh shit, wait—do they not let you have your phone there? Fuck, I should have asked. Okay, well listen, if you get this, call me back. Or like, I don’t know. Just call me. I guess I should probably explain this, huh? Calling you up out of the blue. I know we haven’t talked in ages but you’re still the only person I could think to… never mind. Just… ugh, I don’t know, I probably sound insane but I’m fine, everything's fine, I’m just… I’m sending you something, okay? I’ll get it out there first thing, I just need you to hold onto them for me. I don’t know Jules, I can’t explain it, I just have a weird feeling about things and honestly I might not be here much longer, so it’s just easier if you have them. I promise I’ll explain everything when we talk. And hey—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about everything.

I love you, Julian. Call me back.”

* * *

Julian Kinney would not receive the voicemail from his sister until the morning of her funeral some four weeks later. It was helpful, in some respect, to know that the package he’d inexplicably received (which had been rifled through by the helpful administrators of St. Dymphna’s) had some form of premeditation, though he still did not know what it was.

Samara Kinney was—had been—Julian’s half-sister, though the half was in this case largely unimportant. They were genetically quite divergent, but in terms of chronology, Sam and Julian were practically twins, born eleven months apart to a dancer and aspiring showgirl called Destiny. Falling pregnant with Sam had been the first in an unlucky streak for Destiny, who was then nineteen; Sam’s father, some sort of besuited businessman who frequented the L.A. to Las Vegas direct, turned out to be less sincere about making an honest woman of Destiny than he claimed. Instead he made a dishonest woman of her, and Destiny’s subsequent pregnancy with Julian succeeded temporarily where the first one had not. Julian’s father agreed to raise Sam as his own, but within five years it seemed he’d had enough. Julian’s earliest memory was of his sister Sam in her yellow Easter dress, pleading through the car window for their father to take her with him when he left.

Needless to say, Destiny Kinney was not much of a mother. She was, however, a gambler. Probably her birthright, having spent most of her life in the shadow of Las Vegas’ neon lights, which meant there was no escaping her belief that stardom was a summit ready to be climbed. The promise of fame and fortune was in the water, infecting her blood; a theology Destiny held as sacred as any righteous form of suffering. Of course, Destiny _herself_ wasn’t cut out for it, having ruined her figure and her chances with two parasitic children in a row, but with Sam, Destiny had given birth to her own golden ticket. Sam was a pretty girl with a good voice, and it didn’t hurt that she could easily pass for white. So, within a year of losing her father, Samara Kinney had picked up a thriving pageant career, some local modeling gigs, and a regular hour at an off-strip casino, becoming the family’s sole breadwinner by the tender age of six.

Julian, meanwhile, was Sam’s darker-skinned, less-talented shadow; her best and only friend. Destiny did not trust the other girls in the pageant circuit, whom she believed would be all too happy to poison their fellow competitors—particularly one like Sam, who was noticeably prettier and therefore a threat. As a result, neither Sam nor Julian saw much of anyone aside from each other. Most of Sam’s time was taken up with singing lessons (Destiny was her teacher) and dancing lessons (also Destiny) and when Sam’s school work became too demanding to keep up with her other lessons, Destiny felt homeschooling would be more appropriate (Destiny drilled Sam on the art of winning a crowd; Julian mostly read books).

When Julian was seventeen and Sam eighteen, Sam got second place in the Miss Teen Nevada pageant and promptly tore her sash from her gown, howling like an animal while she ripped the entire thing to shreds. “Are you on drugs?” said Destiny, which only made Sam howl harder. Then Sam left, and though Julian had not known it at the time, he would never see her alive again.

* * *

Julian Kinney stepped out of the town car that had been arranged on his behalf, taking a moment to shut the door carefully behind him. The air outside was sweltering in a new way, a distinctly un-Vegas way, where the heat was similarly inescapable but the whole thing was dry and arid. This was an East Coast stifle, full of humidity and crawling with the faint but unavoidable sensation of bugs. The trees were massive and the architecture was markedly different, the houses either white colonials or brick. Everything was stupendously, prodigiously green, almost in an offensive way. Fuck you, desert boy. That sort of thing.

“Welcome, Mr. Kinney,” said the woman, Professor Thurston, whom Julian had met the week before. She’d been standing at the back of the room at Sam’s funeral, nearly forgettable until the thing Julian was beginning to think of as The Episode. “How was your flight?”

“Good. Fine.” It was the first time Julian had ever flown, but that didn’t seem worth mentioning. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder, glancing up at the building and then back at the professor, who was one of those women who didn’t dye their roots when the greys started pushing in. “Thanks for meeting me.”

“Well, we find this can all be something of a shock, even for those who haven’t been through everything you have.” Thurston rested a sympathetic hand on Julian’s shoulder. “Shall we have a chat in my office first?”

Julian nodded.

“Excellent. Come on inside.”

Julian surveyed the building’s exterior again briefly, noting that it looked how he might have expected it to. He wasn’t totally surprised to discover that this was the sort of place Sam had ended up, since it fit perfectly into her fantasies. As a girl she’d been obsessed with the Ivy League schools, the old money aesthetic against a backdrop of new world aristocracy. 

Julian wondered briefly how Sam had dressed here, because he doubted anything she’d brought with her from home would have fit in. He pictured Sam stepping out of a car in her tiny cut-off denim shorts and halter crop tops, her cheap plastic sandals damp from the dew on the grass. She would have stuck out like a sore thumb and liked it, unlike Julian, who did not. His clothes (also cheap) were new. Nothing he’d left at home still fit him after he’d gotten back from St. Dymphna’s.

Julian followed Professor Thurston through the corridors of the school’s decorative main building, which was newer on the inside than the exterior had suggested. It was an airy, small building that was brightly lit, patches of sun from the courtyard temporarily blinding Julian at regular intervals of approximately six feet. He glanced sideways at one point, noticing a small group of people congregating in the little garden within. One girl with bright white hair caught his eye and then quickly looked away, disappearing into a wave of dazzling sunspots. For a moment, Julian thought he’d dreamt her. 

Thurston led him up a set of spiral stairs, which were narrow and quite clearly older than the first floor’s retrofitted interior. “I like the tower,” Thurston commented to Julian. “Quiet.”

Julian, who also appreciated quiet, said nothing.

Eventually they emerged onto a landing three floors up, which gave way to a cramped set of offices. Thurston headed directly for the one at the end of the hall, a dogged set of footsteps echoing from the stairs above.

“Professor Thurston,” called a young male voice, disrupting their progress just after Thurston had entered her office. Julian, torn, straddled the threshold, unable to prevent a glance over his shoulder. “I have the transcripts you asked for.”

“Ah excellent, thank you, Nero,” said Thurston. “Just leave them in my inbox, would you?”

“Of course.” The student (or what Julian assumed to be a student) caught Julian’s eye, giving him a flicker of a half-smile. “You’re new, I take it?”

His eyes were a noticeable green. An almost ill-fitting green. There was such a sense of clarity to them that the rest of him—thick waves of black hair pulled back into a messy knot, rolling planes of olive skin—seemed like a frame designed purely to showcase the green of them. 

Julian managed a nod.

“Good luck.” The student winked and slipped out of sight.

Julian stepped into the office, gesturing to the door. “Should I…?”

“Yes, close it,” confirmed Professor Thurston, beckoning Julian to a chair after he’d shut the office door behind him. “So,” she said to Julian, in that very brisk but not unkind way that authority figures seemed to like to take with him recently. “How have you been holding up?”

“Fine,” he said.

“You should know that all of us here at the conservatory miss Samara greatly. Her absence has affected all of us, without exception.” Pause. “A deeply tragic loss.”

“Yes,” said Julian. “Very.”

“Were you close?”

“We were.” Julian shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glancing at the bag he’d set beside the leg of his chair. “Though I haven’t spoken to her in almost three years.”

“Ah, well, I’m terribly sorry to hear that—”

He could hear the pity and bristled. “She wanted to leave her old life behind,” Julian said with a shrug. “I can understand that. I don’t blame her.”

Thurston gave Julian a look like, Well, that’s an uncomfortable thing to reply to and I don’t fully appreciate being in this position, to which Julian gave her a look that said I don’t know man, I was homeschooled.

“So, you’re a poet, then?” asked Thurston, pulling out something Julian assumed to be his file. It was very thin, which was to be expected. Julian had not taken the SATs or indeed any exams at all, and he did not have transcripts or letters of recommendation or anything aside from a high school dropout for a lifelong taskmistress. What Julian did have were hospital records and a dead sister—which, academically speaking, could be easily summarized by a post-it note.

“Yes,” Julian said. “Sam and I were both… Well,” he amended on second thought, “I guess she was something different, wasn’t she?”

Thurston’s smile that time was real. “Poetry is where many of our bards start. A song is half poetry.”

“Yeah, but Sam had a voice. A real voice, a winning voice.” Destiny’s words. “Compared to her, I’m just—”

Julian trailed off, glancing again at his bag.

“Mr. Kinney,” Thurston said gently. “I assure you there is not an artist alive who does not question the legitimacy of their art. But this is not Juilliard or Berklee, where talent is honed for years and subjective to the audience. Yes, there are many students at this school who are classically trained,” she conceded, “but there are just as many who are not. Samara was not, and you are not. But as to whether you are eligible to attend this school as a bard, that is not at question. She was, and you are. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Thurston’s smile flickered again. “Now, you will have to begin as a first year student, I’m afraid, despite your age. I discussed it with the other professors and we felt it best you learn among other novice bards, at least for now. I have, however, arranged for you to share a room with a third year. I think you’ll feel more comfortable settling in that way.”

 _Be gracious_ , Destiny trilled to a younger Sam. _Always thank the judges for their time._

“Thank you,” said Julian. 

Thurston nodded. 

“As for the matter of your… recovery,” she said carefully. “Prior to all of this.”

Julian said nothing.

“You should know, Mr. Kinney, that a number of our students face similar challenges. It is not uncommon for bards of any sort to experience severe bouts of—”

“Are you asking me if I’m going to snap again like I did last year?” asked Julian impatiently. “Because I have pills now. I’ve been diagnosed, I’ve gotten treatment. You have pharmacies around here, don’t you? I’m fine,” he said, and then, in case that was not convincing, he repeated it. “I’m fine.”

Thurston looked at him for a very long moment of silence.

“If that’s true, Mr. Kinney,” she said, “then you may very well be the only one here who is.”

* * *

The student, the one with the green eyes who’d winked at him, paused in the open door frame while Thurston was gathering the paperwork for Julian to sign. He seemed to be some sort of teaching or office assistant, and popped his head into Thurston’s office when he noticed Julian sitting there alone.

“Alright?” he asked. 

Julian looked up. “Yeah,” he said. Nero, that was his name. “You?”

“Oh, brilliant.” Nero held up the stack of photocopies he was making. “So, you’re a bard?”

“Apparently.”

“Did you have a revelation?”

“A what?”

“A revelation. It’s what they call a first time. Usually freaks everyone out.”

Ah yes, The Episode. “Yeah.”

“Excellent. Same. My grandmother tried to have me exorcised.”

“What?”

“I mean, I was eight and she’s very religious. Old school Catholic. You get it.”

Julian had never set foot in a church. “Yeah.”

Nero looked like he was going to walk away, which made sense. He was tall and attractive and wore clothes that looked expensive, unlike Julian’s. Nero seemed like the sort of person who didn’t need more friends, because everyone was his friend. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Sam had been like that, too.

“You look familiar,” said Nero, doubling back after another moment. “Feels like I’ve met you before.”

“In another life or this one?” asked Julian.

Nero smiled. Dimples. Grand. “Either. Both.”

Should he talk about Sam?

Maybe he should mention Sam.

“Actually,” Julian said, but then Thurston reappeared, bustling into the office from the printer.

“Got your term schedule as well,” she announced, sounding triumphant, and in Julian’s fleeting moment of distraction, the student in the doorway had already disappeared.

* * *

The dorms were in a separate building, of which there were a total of five. One for the school’s administrative offices and some classrooms, one that seemed to be part of a self-sufficient farm, one for additional classrooms, one that looked like a chapel, and one for the student dorms. Around the campus were a series of wooded areas overlooking the gorges, a quarter-mile or so from a lake, and the buildings were arranged in something of a pentagon, situated placidly around a grassy area of more obscene green.

Julian had declined Thurston’s offer to walk him over, instead choosing to orient himself on his own. He paused in the center of the grassy knoll, looking down at the little brass plaque beneath his feet. Beneath the name of Dives Conservatory were five words:

_FOR THOSE WHO MAKE MAGIC_

Sam would have loved that. She was a romantic about things, about ideas, and she’d always had an energy that was fearsome, unstoppably bright. Julian had always believed Sam was magical; that he had turned out to be right was in some ways a victory. It was meager, but so were all consolation prizes. He gripped his bag tighter, staring down at the words. There was still some sweetness in the bittersweet.

“Sorry,” said a voice somewhere in his periphery. “This is crazy, but… are you Julian Kinney?”

Julian turned to find a girl with pale pink mermaid waves glancing tentatively at him. She had her nose pierced in three places: right, left, and septum, with a little opal dangling from the latter. Destiny had never approved of piercings or tattoos; the day Sam had gotten one at fifteen, she’d dragged Julian out with her and made him promise never to tell. He hadn’t, of course, but Destiny spotted it within a week. She never let Sam have a moment of privacy, as Sam herself liked to rant, so Destiny caught sight of it when she was kicking some older man out of Sam’s bed. Sam had to cover it up for the swimsuit portions of pageants, which Julian had always thought was ironic. It was thin script on her ribs that said _SOME BIRDS AREN’T MEANT TO BE FREE_.

“Yeah,” said Julian, shaking himself of the memory. “Sorry, do I know you?”

“Oh gosh, sorry, it’s just that Sam’s shown us your picture so many times, and… good lord, I must sound insane. I’m Olympia,” she offered hastily, as if she expected him to have heard of her before. “You’re supposed to be living with Lam, right? Kind of cruel if you think about it, but whatever. Hey, Skit,” she called over her shoulder to an Asian looking girl with stocky bare legs and egregious purple hair. “Look what I found.”

“No shit,” gasped the girl called Skit, staring at Julian like a puppy she planned to take home with her. “Where’s Reid? Or fuck, to hell with Reid, where’s Cat?”

“With Graves, probably, who knows. You know how Cat is when she’s writing—”

“Whatever, her loss. Priscilla Ransom,” announced the other girl, thrusting out a hand for Julian’s. 

“Priscilla?” asked Julian, a little dazed.

“Almost never,” she said. “But technically yes.”

“Pri-skill-a,” Olympia supplied in explanation, enunciating the silent letter. “Skilla, Skittles, Skit or sometimes Skat—”

Priscilla or Skit rolled her eyes. “Only Sam called me that,” she said without a trace of hesitation.

Julian inhaled so sharply he almost cut himself on its edge.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” said Skit, catching the look on his face. “It’s just… for us it’s just easier to keep her alive, you know? In some way.”

“It’s half delusion, half coping mechanism,” offered Olympia wryly, resting a hand on Julian’s forearm. “But if you’d prefer we didn’t…”

It was beginning to sink in for Julian that Sam had clearly made friends in her new life. Good friends, which was probably why she hadn’t needed him anymore. 

“I was just looking for my room,” Julian said, clearing his throat and withdrawing from Olympia’s grip. “You said something about a… lamb?”

“Calamity Archman,” said Skit, which was indeed the surname listed on the housing contract that Julian carried with him from Thurston’s office. “We call him Lam for short, or at least we used to.” She glanced at Olympia, who shrugged. “His twin sister is Cat—Catastrophe Archman.”

Calamity and Catastrophe. “Is… that a joke?” asked Julian, bewildered.

“Honestly, we’ve never known. Their father is Professor Archman,” Skit said. “He’s… eccentric, to say the least. You’ll see.”

“Sam never mentioned Calamity to you?” asked Olympia curiously.

“She sometimes called him Cal,” Skit added, as if that had been the problem. “She did that, didn’t she? Renamed people,” she remarked with a wry, nostalgic smile. “Like she was christening them or something, making them hers. She mentioned once that she was the only one who called you Jules.”

Julian suddenly felt very sick.

“I’m just… I have to go,” he said, stumbling over himself and heading for the dorms.

The dorms were much like the other building had been: old and stodgily undecorated, though these rooms were interesting in that—like Thurston’s tower—they had clearly not been designed for this use. The interior was like an old Victorian house that had been partitioned after the fact, without any recognizable uniformity to its layout. His room was on the top floor—the fourth, for which he’d had to climb an increasingly narrow and seemingly unending set of stairs—and was locked. Julian knocked twice, then reached for his key.

He was still looking down when the door suddenly opened, a girl with red-rimmed eyes appearing in the frame. For a second he felt blinded by her appearance, and registered belatedly that it was the same girl he’d seen earlier in the courtyard. She had platinum-bright, unnaturally white hair (obviously dyed, like everyone else’s seemed to be) and wide, dark eyes that were framed by sweeping, doll-like lashes. The majority of her neck was tattooed with a delicate pattern, like lace, a crescent moon beside her eye, with an inked piece of jewelry that fell around her clavicle; little illustrative diamonds that dripped like tears.

For a second her mouth opened, then closed. Recognition sank in and Julian could almost feel the way part of her wrestled with disbelief.

“If you don’t kill him, I will,” she said firmly, and then she slid past him, taking the stairs without a backward glance. Julian watched her go, lingering in the vacant doorway for the second it took to realign himself with a world where she did not exist.

“You’ll get used to it,” drawled a voice from inside the room. “Or you won’t, and either way, I don’t really care.”

Julian stepped inside the room to find it was one of those attic spaces; the ceiling was pitched at the center, high at the apex of the room and then progressively lower until it met the walls on either side. There were twin beds aligned like mirror images, one of which held a bare mattress while the other was occupied by the person who must have been Calamity Archman.

It was obvious at first glance that the girl Julian had just bumped into was Calamity’s twin sister Catastrophe. Calamity’s hair was a dark brown-black, which must have been her natural hair color, but there was something else about their faces. A similar expression, though Calamity’s was hardened where Catastrophe’s had been burdened. Calamity had a distinctive hardness in general, and though the two were unmistakably siblings, what had been breathtaking on her was malevolent on him.

“So,” said Calamity, dragging himself upright. “You’re Julian.”

Calamity was shirtless. On the left side of his chest was a tattoo of a sun rising (or setting) behind mountain peaks, rays extending out towards his shoulder from an orb of negative space. 

Julian cleared his throat and slid his bag from his shoulder, glancing around the room. There was a fairly large window with no blinds or curtains, and very little mess on the floor aside from four or five heaping piles of books.

Julian sat on the unmade bed, facing Calamity Archman. 

“Yes,” he said. “I’m Julian.”

“I’m Lam.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Well then.” Lam’s tone resonated just below a sneer. “What else have you heard about me?”

Julian glanced at his hands. “Nothing.”

“Mm. Well. I’m sure you’ll know plenty soon enough.”

Julian could feel Lam staring at him, gauging him. The idea of being scrutinized yet again was suddenly very exhausting, which was historically a sensation that Julian did not manage well. 

He thought of Olympia and Skit and grimaced.

“You should know that my sister—” Julian began, and then stopped. “My sister wasn’t speaking to me or anything before she died. I didn’t know about any of this.”

“Yeah, no shit,” said Lam. 

He shot to his feet, suddenly agitated, and reached for a shirt that was hanging on the back of a chair. They each had desks, one of which was—like the floor—piled high with books. The vacancy intended for Julian’s space, near the door rather than the closet, was considerably more cramped. Julian chose to stare intently at his bag, not looking up.

“Unlike the rest of this school, I actually knew your sister,” Lam said flatly. “I’m probably the only person who did.” A pause. “Except for you,” he muttered. “Not that that changes anything.”

Julian felt it possible that was a display of goodwill on Lam’s part. He considered replying with something equally well-intentioned, if only for the sake of coexistence, but could not think of anything. After such an exhausting day, he mostly wanted to stop feeling such a tumorous newness. He wanted to stop uncovering new mysteries every goddamn place he stepped.

“What is it I’m supposed to have heard about you?” Julian asked bluntly, indulging his curious nature over his sensible one.

“That I killed her,” Lam said.

Julian had the feeling Lam wanted him to react explosively, so he didn’t.

“And did you?”

Lam Archman laughed, and laughed, and laughed and laughed.

Then with an abrupt collapse of sound, he strode out of the room and was gone.

In the absence of his cheery new roommate, Julian finally let out a breath of relief, collapsing backwards onto the mattress. He was becoming increasingly certain he’d erred prodigiously by coming here.

Then again, Sam had left him no choice.

Julian thrust out a hand blindly for his bag, reaching into it with the compulsion of an addict. He’d brought almost nothing of value with him; a couple of shirts, some jeans. Clean underwear and socks, and then the package he’d gotten one week before his sister died.

Inside were at least a dozen notebooks filled with songs, which Julian had initially thought were poems like the ones they used to write. They’d made up stories together as kids, often trading off one sentence at a time. Sam would start with something like Once upon a time there was a conservatory specifically for kids who made magic with music, and Julian would follow up with But everyone there was either too nice or kind of massively a dick. And then Sam would say You’re ruining the game Jules stop it and he’d say Okay fine it was a magical school and we both got to go.

Together, Sam would say.

Yeah, together, Julian would promise, and Sam would smile because she’d gotten her way. 

He reached for the notebook titled “For Julian,” opening it to the front page and running his finger over the familiar handwriting. Sam had had terrible penmanship, and she was also kind of an abysmal speller. Between the two of them, only Julian had been the bookish one.

“ _Save some face, you know you've only got one_ ,” he read aloud. “ _Change your ways while you're young_.”

He had never been a singer. That was Sam’s talent; singing and dancing. She was a born performer, and though she’d come to hate the pageants, Julian knew she’d never stopped loving to perform. She fed off the energy of the crowd, sadistic with the pleasure she took from those who couldn’t look away. It was only when the show was over that the magic would bleed out from a gaping wound, the girl left in its place little more than an empty container waiting to once again be filled.

 _Boy, one day you'll be a man_ _  
_ _Oh girl, he'll help you understand_ _  
_ _Smile like you mean it_

It would only really work if he sang it aloud.

Julian sighed.

“ _Looking back at sunsets on the East side, we lost track of the time_ ,” he sang softly to himself. “ _Dreams aren't what they used to be, some things slide by so carelessly_ —”

He trailed off, pausing again. 

What had she meant by that? What had she done?

Julian shook himself and clutched the journal tighter, curling up on his side. He wouldn’t get an answer tonight, but maybe soon.

“ _Smile like you mean it_ ,” he sang. “ _Smile like you mean it_.”

The air, stiff as it was with heat, warped slightly.

“ _And someone is calling my name from the back of the restaurant, and someone is playing a game in the house that I grew up in. And someone will drive you around down the same streets that I did_ ,” Julian sang, fighting not to let his voice waver. 

From the room’s vacancy came a whorl of presence, unmistakably full.

“ _On the same streets that I did—_ ”

He felt her laughter envelope him, hearing it before he saw her.

“ _Smile like you mean it_ ,” he whisper-sang, and then, like magic, there she was.

Her hair wasn’t long anymore. She must have cut it as soon as she left Vegas; maybe not even. She probably chopped it off in the restroom of a gas station or something, and then she’d obviously kept it short. Sam had always been a real beauty, so tan she was golden with hair so thick and healthy that everyone assumed it was fake, and she hadn’t gotten any less lovely during the time she’d been away. She was a healthier weight now—presumably nobody was counting her calories anymore—and if anything, it made her look better. Less pageant-perfect, more real.

She was wearing something Julian recognized, though she hadn’t owned it when she still lived at home. It was a blue sundress, which had been among the things returned to his mother along with the rest of Sam’s clothes. Destiny had folded them all up carefully and put them in the closet, into the purple box where all of Sam’s things had been carefully preserved; as if she might ever come back for them.

“Hey Sam,” Julian said, reaching for her from where he lay curled on the bed. “I miss you.” 

But the song was over, so she was gone.

* * *

By the time Julian knew anything about what had happened to Sam, the police report had already been filed. An accident, they said. She was known to hike alone around the gorges, usually disappearing to swim in the lake and then return with her hair wet and clothes dripping. A consequence of growing up in the desert; Sam had always loved swimming pools. 

There had been no persuasive evidence of foul play, they said, nor of intentional self-harm. Her clothes, the blue sundress, had been found the next morning, prompting a three day search. People had seen her that last day, no different from any other day. She hadn’t been in trouble, she didn’t have any enemies. She hadn’t left a note behind or made her peace; she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary at all.

Aside from sending Julian every song she’d ever written, that is, and leaving a cryptic message on his voicemail, which he hadn’t bothered telling anyone about. For one thing, everyone had referred to him as the half-brother— _estranged_ —or simply the kid who’d had the breakdown. He was unstable, by definition untrustworthy, and his word—his belief that his sister loved life too much to end it and swam too proficiently to lose it—counted for nothing more than the conspiratorial ramblings of a madman. Julian was accustomed to being sidelined for one reason or another, his sanity or his lack of talent, so none of that was new.

What _was_ new was Julian’s belief that Sam had left him something; a treasure map designed specifically for him. In her last moments—whether she’d known they would be her last or not—Sam Kinney had turned to the only person she trusted, and now it was Julian’s job to unravel the mystery she’d left. That was enough to keep him going where other things were not. 

Julian stared out from the edge of the conservatory’s campus, looking blindly toward the sound of rushing water that echoed upward from the bluffs. He imagined he could feel now what Sam must have felt then; the little twist of longing, like maybe this was her real home.

“First day went that badly, huh?”

Julian pivoted with a start at the sound of the voice behind him, one hand rising to the thump of his pulse in his chest. “Jesus _Christ_ —”

The student from the office chuckled, flashing the torch on his phone into Julian’s eyes before shutting it off and sliding it back into his pocket. “Sorry, just thought I recognized you when I was walking back. Contemplating the thin veil between life and death?”

Something like that. “Just… looking.”

“Understandable. It’s peaceful here at night,” Nero said. He trod through the grass to stop beside Julian, staring out over the rustle of darkness that was punctuated only by the silhouettes of moonlit trees. 

“Do you come here often?” Julian asked.

“More and more,” Nero said.

And then, after a pause, “You know, it’s funny…”

He trailed off, and Julian waited.

“Gonna tell me the joke?” prompted Julian.

Nero chuckled. “Nah, it’s just sentimental bullshit.” 

“I love sentimental bullshit.” He’d had so little of it, after all.

“Do you? I bet you do.” Nero glanced at Julian again, then shrugged. “I was just going to say it’s funny how it kind of enchants you the first time you see it, and then eventually it just becomes familiar, sort of commonplace. But then you realize as you get closer and closer to losing it how much it all means to you, and you want to capture the same feeling you had at first but it gets… muddled somehow. Like nothing’s ever the same again.”

“True of most things,” commented Julian.

“Ah, so you’re a cynic.” Nero curled a hand around a grin. “Of course you are.”

“You can tell that by looking?”

“Mm.” He folded his arms over his chest and faced Julian. “So,” he said. “What kind of bard are you?”

“There’s different kinds?” 

“Not officially,” said Nero with a shrug. “But you know, we lean into certain specialties. Sirens, oracles. Though you’d probably know if you were one of those.” He stopped, and then turned back to the view of the lake. Julian, who’d been too swollen with humidity to sleep, was still too lethargic to look away. “So what was it like? Your revelation.”

There had been almost no one else in the room. Just Destiny blotting her tears away, their elderly neighbor, and Professor Thurston, whom at first Julian had felt angry about. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to be there to witness his grief, until later when he’d become grateful. It saved him the trouble of wondering what the fuck he’d even done.

“I was a guest at a funeral,” Julian said. “I, uh. Sang something.”

“And that was the first time you’d ever sung?” Nero asked doubtfully. “Because no offense, but you don’t look like a first year.”

“Should that offend me?”

Nero shrugged. “Just asking.”

“I’m guessing it was the circumstances,” Julian said. “I mean, I don’t _remember_ singing anything, but I’m sure I probably did. My—” He stopped himself before saying his sister. “My friend, I had written her a poem once. Not even a poem,” he corrected himself. “Just… a line. ‘I got soul, but I’m not a soldier.’ And then she, uh… she finished it for me.” He stopped, but Nero said nothing. “So, yeah. So I sang it, and—” 

Julian broke off. “Yeah. I sang it.”

He was grateful Nero didn’t press him.

“Did you see colors and shit?” Nero asked. “That’s common.”

“Yeah, something like that.” He didn’t want to think about it anymore. “What about you?”

“My revelation? Told you. My nan pissed her pants.”

“No, I mean what’s your… you know. Your thing.”

Nero turned to him with a laughing smile. “My thing?”

“Yeah,” Julian said, meaning it more the longer the curiosity set in. “I mean, I’ve never seen anyone else do it, so…”

Nero gave a little concessionary nod. “I guess that’s fair.”

He took a step toward Julian, looking at him for a long moment, and then reached out. Two of Nero’s fingers found the spot of pulse behind Julian’s ear, behind the bone of his jaw, and began marking it with a tap. First to the beat of Julian’s pulse, and then, once Julian swallowed, increasing the rate of motion, the percussive beat of his touch suddenly jolting through Julian like a scream; like a sharp cry of feedback, an electric guitar plugging into the amp of his chest.

The pressure built in his bones, in his head, thudding like bass. His ribs felt split open and charged, traumatic and manic. Like driving a stolen car down a dead-end street.

“ _Breaking my back just to know your name. Seventeen tracks and I’ve had it with this game_.”

Nero’s voice was a throaty sort of yowl, tomcat wild. Nothing like his speaking voice, which was measured and rehearsed, reeking of _we both know you like me_. His singing voice was something else.

“ _I’m breaking my back just to know your name, but heaven ain’t close in a place like this; anything goes, but don’t blink you might miss_ ,” he sang, both hands closing around Julian’s face until his eyelids grew heavy, leadened with electricity and sound. “ _I said oh heaven ain’t close in a place like this. Bring it back down, bring it back down tonight—_ ”

Something, Julian’s own heart, thudded twice in answer, and Nero leaned closer, half-holding him up.

“ _Never thought I’d let a rumor ruin my moonlight_ ,” he teased in Julian’s ear, and then released him sharply. “ _But somebody told me that you had a boyfriend, who looked like a girlfriend, that I had in February of last year. It’s not confidential, I’ve got potential—_ ”

Julian stumbled forward and Nero snatched his chin.

“ _Ready? Let’s roll into something new, taking its toll and I’m leaving without you—_ ”

Julian felt drunk. Drugged. An image of Sam swam into his head; the two of them drinking airline bottles of vodka she’d swiped from somewhere, both of them too young to know the sensation would infect them for the rest of their lives. For as long as they lived they would only ever want to swim like that, alone together and free.

“ _Pace yourself for me_ ,” Nero whispered, his hands clutched around Julian’s jaw again. “ _I said maybe, baby, please. But I just don’t know now, when all I want to do is try…_ ”

Julian closed his eyes, certain he’d be sick in the morning.

“ _Somebody told me you had a boyfriend—_ ”

“You know what the worst thing is, Jules?” a younger Sam whispered in his ear. “ _Fear_.”

“ _—who looked like a girlfriend—_ ”

“She’s so scared, don’t you think? Fucking terrified, you can see it on her face. When I lose, but especially when I win.”

“— _that I had in February of last year_ —”

“She honestly thinks if she has me she’ll live forever. Like, if she keeps me here, it’ll be like her own personal fountain of youth—” 

“— _it’s not confidential, I’ve got potential_ —”

“Fucking irony, right? Destiny. What a joke.”

“— _rushing, a-rushing around_.” 

The song was over and Julian came out of his trance with a gasp. It took a moment for him to blink Sam away, though he could tell this was different, a distinct sort of talent from what he could do. This wasn’t the real Sam; this was Julian himself, the inside of his own head tumbling outwards. He wondered if Nero, whoever he was, had seen it too.

“Please,” Julian croaked after a second, “tell me other people aren’t as good at that as you.”

Nero laughed, the spell broken. “Nah, not even close.”

“Thank god for that.” Julian felt the magic leaving his body like the loosening of a noose. “You wrote that song?”

“We can generally only make magic with the music we write, yeah.” Nero slid a hand back, brushing away an errant curl. “Sometimes it works with other songs, but rarely, and not as well.”

“Oh.” Julian hadn’t sung anything but Sam’s songs, but maybe that was an exception, which seemed well-earned. It felt justified, somehow, that Julian should lay claim to them; as if magic itself was confirming they’d lived the same song. Or maybe by giving them to him, Sam’s songs had become his. “Who’d you write it for?”

“Oh, just… someone. Someone I knew.”

They were still close enough that Julian’s gaze didn’t have to travel far. 

“You know, I really do feel like I’ve met you before,” Nero remarked softly to himself, his brow furrowed. Puzzled, almost. Like he was replaying Julian’s face over and over in his mind.

Julian thought briefly of asking Nero if he’d known Sam when Nero seemed to suddenly jar himself awake. 

“I’d better get to bed,” Nero said. “I have an early exam tomorrow.”

He stepped out of reach and Julian caught himself leaning into the vacancy, teetering forward as if the thing holding them both up had suddenly snapped.

“Don’t you want to know who I am?” Julian asked in bewilderment.

Nero paused, considering it for a second. With the moon overhead Julian could almost see his eyes the way he’d seen them earlier in the sun: obscenely, profoundly green.

“Nah,” Nero said with a grin, all _you like me_ charm again. “Why ruin the mystery?”

And then he was gone.

* * *

Calamity Archman was asleep when Julian returned to their room and then gone before Julian woke. Julian, succumbing to his second phone alarm, dressed groggily in one of his five possible wardrobe combinations, too unaccustomed to the time zone to really settle into the concept of morning. Outside there was birdsong and clatter, and Julian slipped out of his room to blend unobtrusively with the herd of other students progressing down the stairs.

“Julian!” called the rose-haired girl from yesterday—Olympia, who was stalking over to him across the grassy knoll. She was wearing a short dress made entirely of ivory lace, translucent ankle socks embroidered with flowers, and worn brown loafers. “Come and have breakfast with us before class. This is Reid Karim,” she added, gesturing to the black-haired boy next to her who looked like he’d been kidnapped by the fae at a very young age—it was something about the wide, almost elfin eyes, plus he only came up to Julian’s shoulder—“and this is Em Wilder.”

Without meaning to, Julian blinked with confusion at the appearance with Em, who was one of the most androgynous people Julian had ever seen. Em had long-ish, messy auburn curls worn without any obvious styling, a face with delicate but unspecific features, and a wardrobe that made gender totally indiscernible. A loose white shirt hung over black jeans that were cuffed above a pair of white labelless sneakers. 

“Oh, uh. Hi,” said Julian, who’d seen tassel-clad showgirls and drag queens along with everyone in between, but nothing that had ever left him this uncertain.

Em gave him a look like they’d heard that one before and continued their progress towards the dining hall without a reply.

Olympia, who seemed to be the most sociable among them, didn’t seem to have noticed; perhaps Em simply did that all the time. “Did you sleep well?” she asked Julian. “You won’t have much time before class, but that’s understandable. Who do you have first? Not Iver, I hope. He’s a strict one.”

“Um, no,” said Julian. “Actually I have Archman first.”

“Oh, goodness, jumping right in, then,” said Olympia, looking as if she planned to ask him at least a dozen more questions. Reid, who was at her side, passed Julian an impish smile. 

“Let the kid breathe, O,” suggested Reid, adding to Julian, “You’ll be fine. Just get through it, and then we’ll meet up later to explain in detail everything you did wrong.”

“Oh, _Reid_ ,” Olympia sighed, “that’s really not helpful—”

“Did I hear you say you have Archman first?” came a voice to his left.

Julian turned to find Catastrophe Archman approaching him, her platinum hair tied into a high ponytail. With her hair pulled back from her face, he could see the little illustrative jewels that had been inked into her skin from her temple to the midpoint of her ear, just visible from the edge of her hairline. She wore a plain tank top with a black skirt, a leather folder tucked securely under the wing of her arm.

Julian wondered if setting eyes on her would ever become less dazzling.

“I’m heading there now,” Catastrophe explained with a tentative smile, tacitly apologizing for her brusque collision with him yesterday. “I could take you, if you wanted—”

“But Julian hasn’t had breakfast yet,” protested Olympia.

Julian shook his head. “I’m not hungry,” he said, ignoring the growl from his stomach.

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course you are,” said Olympia.

“Jesus, O,” said Em, whose voice was equally indiscernible. “You’re not his mother—”

“Oh, are we all here?” called a breathless Skit, catching up to them from where she’d been hurrying from the dorms. “Sorry, sorry, woke up late—”

“How can you have woken up late?” demanded Olympia. “I woke you myself a half hour ago!”

“There’s a difference between awake and up, and that’s on you for not knowing by now,” said Skit. She was wearing flannel over cutoff shorts, which made no sense to Julian. It was barely eight in the morning and still absolutely sweltering, which neither Skit nor her heavy eyeliner seemed to notice. “Em gets it.”

“Em does _not_ get it,” Em corrected blisteringly.

“Oh, so this hair you did on purpose, then?” countered Skit.

“Some of us lack your vanity, Priscilla,” said Reid.

“Quiet or I won’t give you the composition notes you asked for,” warned Skit.

“You stole those from me!” said Olympia. 

“Come on,” murmured Catastrophe, taking Julian’s arm. He slipped away with her gladly, allowing her to steer him away from the dining hall and towards the building that looked like a church. “I’m Cat, by the way.”

“I know. I’m Julian.”

“I know.”

They walked in silence, Cat’s arms folded around her leather file.

“I’m just bringing some annotations to my father,” she said. “He’s very particular.”

“I’m told he’s eccentric,” Julian said. Mostly out of a desire to say something.

“Only in the usual ways,” said Cat.

She led him around the church to the back, walking in through an open door and then leading him down to a basement classroom. 

“Daddy,” she said. “I have the annotations you asked for.”

A man who did not look nearly old enough to be her father glanced up from behind a pile of sheet music at his desk, squinting at them. At first glance, he was unquestionably the source of the twins’ feline eyes, their narrow faces. “Thank you, Catastrophe,” he said, staring intently at Julian. “And you must be the new student.”

“I’m Julian,” said Julian.

“You’re a bit early.”

“I walked him over,” said Cat. “I thought maybe—”

“Are you actually a bard, or is this a matter of Thurston throwing her weight around again?” asked Professor Archman, interrupting his daughter. As far as Julian could tell, he seemed to have hardly noticed her at all. “Because I do not accept middling talent.”

Julian suddenly had a feeling he knew where Calamity got his unpleasantness.

Cat, who looked slightly embarrassed, cleared her throat, and Julian, who did not particularly care for fathers (or mothers), felt a tug of allegiance towards her. “Daddy, I’m sure Julian is—”

“Samara was exceptional,” said Archman. He stared at Julian for a long time, then folded his arms over his chest. “Sing something.”

Oh good, just like that. Ideal.

“This is a performance class,” Archman said impatiently, reading Julian’s mind. “As such I expect that you will perform.”

Sing when I say sing, dance when I say dance. A very Destiny Kinney school of thought.

“I don’t exactly… have much material,” said Julian.

“Then sing whatever you sang to Thurston,” said Archman. 

Julian glanced beside him at Cat, who hesitated. She seemed to want to defend him, but was equally resigned to not being heard. She gave him a small shrug, and he exhaled thinly. 

“Fine.” 

There was no real fanfare. Cat stepped away to lean against one of the desks and Julian closed his eyes, the scribbled incoherence of Sam’s handwriting floating once again to mind.

“ _When there’s nowhere else to run, is there room for one more son? One more son_ ,” he sang, voice worryingly off-pitch. “ _If you can, hold on. If you can, hold on… hold on_.”

It was the first one in the notebook: _For Julian_. When he’d sung it at the funeral, Destiny had turned her head away to cry. Here, though, Julian opened his eyes and Cat was out of sight, probably so as to not disturb him. Only Professor Archman was still staring at him, expectant and silent, so Julian tapped his fingers shakily against his thigh, giving himself a beat.

“ _I wanna stand up, I wanna let go; you know, you know, no, you don’t, you don’t. I wanna shine on in the hearts of man. I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand_.”

The air warped as it usually did, becoming thinner and thicker. Soon she would be here again, familiar and unfamiliar. Strange, distant, and still the only thing Julian really knew.

“ _Another head aches, another heart breaks, I’m so much older than I can take—_ ” He broke off, struggling as he had before, reminded once again that Sam would never get old, not really. No matter what she’d meant when she wrote it. “ _And my affection, well it comes and goes, I need direction to perfection—_ ”

 _No, no, no, no_ —

“ _Help me out_ ,” Julian pleaded when a figure took shape in front of him. “ _Yeah, you know you gotta help me out, don’t you put me on the back burner, you gotta help me out—_ ”

But when she came fully into view, it wasn’t Sam at all.

“ _And when there’s nowhere else to run_ ,” Julian sang, nearly choking on his surprise at the appearance of a woman he’d never seen before in his life. “ _Is there room for one more son_?” 

She wasn’t looking at him. Whoever she was, she had his back to him, though he couldn’t stop staring at her.

It had never not been Sam before.

“ _These changes ain’t changing me, the cold-hearted boy I used to b-_ ”

“Stop,” said Archman.

Julian stopped, and the woman vanished.

Archman got to his feet and disappeared from the room, the sound of his brisk footfall fading into nothing until finally Julian became reacquainted with the fact that Cat still remained.

“Well. Don’t think he liked me much,” he joked, turning to her, but then the words died in his mouth.

There was an expression on her face he felt sure he knew. He could recognize it like the beat of his own pulse or the breath in his own lungs. Like the way he had looked every single day since the morning he’d woken up without Sam. On Cat it was beautifully tragic, on him it was sullen and morose. But it was the same.

Catastrophe.

“When did your mother die?” he asked her, and Cat looked up sharply, guarded. He shrugged, spreading his hands. “Loss knows loss,” he offered in apology.

She looked at the ground, and then up at him.

“Come with me,” she said.

He wasn’t sure where they were going when she led him out of her father’s classroom; voices were beginning to filter into the corridor outside, his class soon to begin. She ignored them and continued out without stopping, pulling Julian along while they swam upstream, away from the buildings and into the radiating sun. People looked at her, recognizing her, but she ignored them. She walked until they reached the edge of campus, facing out over the bluff.

Once they reached it Cat stopped abruptly, as if her legs had given out. 

“Your sister was my best friend,” she said.

“Yeah,” Julian said. “Mine too.”

Cat raised one hand to her eyes, swiping angrily at them and then folding her arms tightly across her chest, holding herself in. After a full minute’s silence, she finally turned to face him.

“So you’re an orpheus,” she said blandly.

Orpheus, whose songs were so full of grief the gods allowed him to follow Eurydice into the Underworld. Julian had told Sam that story when he was twelve and she’d cried like it was her own loss, her own grief. He had never understood why; when he asked her, she only sobbed harder, as if the fact that he didn’t know somehow hurt doubly, because now she’d have to carry it alone.

“I guess so,” he said.

“That’s not what Sam is. Was.” Cat looked likely to cry again, or like she was still fighting tears. Two ghosts at one time was probably difficult to handle.

Julian took a step closer to her, suddenly overcome with the need to offer her something. Cat gave a shaky sigh in response, turning away.

“I’m sorry. This must seem so—”

“It doesn’t.”

“But still, I must look so—”

“You don’t.” He hazarded a reach for her hand. “Don’t apologize.”

His thumb brushed her knuckles and she let out another slow breath, a degree or so of tension gone from her posture at his touch.

“My mother died when I was a baby,” she confessed after a moment. “I’ve only ever seen pictures of her, and never anything like that. I had no idea that she looked so much like—”

She stopped.

“Like you?” Julian guessed, brushing her fingers again. She looked down, hooking her pointer finger around his and giving it a tiny, grateful tug.

“No, not me.” Cat gave a reluctant laugh, turning her hand over so their knuckles brushed. “She looks like Lam,” she said sadly, a girl who’d searched a lifetime for something only to discover it wasn’t there.

Julian felt a bracing sense of disagreement, though he supposed he hadn’t gotten a close enough look at either Lam Archman or his mother to know whether that was true or not.

“What’s with the names?” he asked instead, and Cat grimaced, letting him twine his pinky finger with hers.

“Musicians are odd folk,” she said with a shrug. “Bards even more so, though everything else about our upbringing was very conventional. Lam’s middle name is Edward,” she added with a smirk.

“What’s yours?”

“Mm,” she said with a grumble of provocation. “Not telling you.”

“It can’t be worse than Catastrophe.”

“When your name is Catastrophe, the scale of ‘worse’ is very different.”

“I won’t laugh,” he said. “Promise.”

“Sam laughed.”

“That’s because Sam laughs,” Julian said. “It’s what she does.”

“And you don’t?”

“No,” Julian said, confessing more than he’d meant to. “No, I don’t.”

Cat looked up at him at the precise moment he looked down at her, their eyes colliding so unexpectedly it seemed to shock them both. 

“She was just… so much, wasn’t she?” Cat murmured.

“She was everything,” Julian said.

He watched her swallow, her fingers tightening in his. 

“Julian,” Cat said softly.

Everyone else’s sympathy had felt heavy, distant. Not hers. He felt as if she was seeing him clearly, perhaps for the first time, and he took a step towards her, waiting. Wanting to hear what came next.

But then someone called out from behind him, and her hand abruptly fell from his.

“What are you doing out here?” came a laughing voice. “I thought we’d dealt sufficiently with your penchant for misbehavior, Miss Archman, but if you’d like me to refresh your memory—”

Julian turned to find himself face-to-face with the green-eyed office assistant from yesterday, who stopped short, tilting his head with playful confusion once it became obvious their recognition was mutual.

“Julian Kinney,” said Cat. “This is my boyfriend Graves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, I asked myself what would make me happy to write right now, and the answer was essentially a rock opera. I'm not sure what my update schedule will be since I have no idea if anyone will read this or find it interesting, but... yeah. This is what the demon wanted, so here we are.


	2. Throwing Caution

Regardless of what Skit or Reid might have to say about it, Olympia Stax was not the so-called mom friend of the group, but rather the keeper of its secrets. Which was not a role she had ever asked for, by the way, but the sudden materialization of Samara Kinney in her life had made it so.

“Holy shit, you’re pretty,” had been Sam’s first words to Olympia, who at the time was carefully placing each of her dresses onto those flimsy velvet hangers that snapped in half with even a single careless tug (though at least they kept the straps on, and Olympia was rarely careless). “No, not pretty,” Sam amended, the hanger in question clutched protectively in Olympia’s hand. “You look like a fucking daydream, you know what I mean? My mother would absolutely despise you,” she concluded gleefully, then struck a hand out. “I’m Sam. Can you keep a secret?”

“I hope so,” replied Olympia, who was absolutely thunderstruck. She’d only recently gotten off a long bus ride that had followed a long train ride and she hadn’t spoken to anyone in at least five or six hours, aside from the orientation student who’d handed her the room assignment and a key. Not that Olympia usually sought out company to begin with; she was the oldest of four and the only girl, so she was mostly in the business of grasping for spare moments of privacy. (Olympia’s mother, eternally in need of an extra set of hands, had been all too sorry to let her go.)

“I hope so too,” said Sam, throwing herself onto the bare mattress with a contented sigh. “Because as far as secrets go, I plan to have plenty of ‘em real soon.”

Olympia had been replaying the moment in her head with increased frequency of late, repeatedly glancing at her open door frame as if Sam would walk in again precisely the way she’d done it before. Never mind that over two years had gone by since then; in Olympia’s mind, she was constantly bracing for the possibility her former roommate might waltz in unexpectedly and make herself at home. 

In the absence of any funeral or memorial service—absent anything, really, to make her feel as though Sam’s loss was in any way real or even final—Olympia had wandered helplessly back to that original room on the first floor of the dorms, carrying out an unplanned, agnostic vigil for herself. They’d since advanced in the pecking order when it came to the better rooms, but Olympia had stood by the original closet door that had once been hers and waited for hours in silence, every muscle tensed for the possibility that Sam Kinney might return to her life in some new and electrifying way.

The start of fall term had left no time for pointless rituals or silly superstitions, of course. Classes were in full swing now, and Olympia fought a yawn as she concluded her advisory meeting with Professor Errata, taking the blind corner out of the building of classrooms they all referred to as the Highlands without her usual cursory glance.

“Jesus, fuck,” said a voice, colliding with her. “Sorry, O—”

“Graves,” exhaled Olympia, her armful of contents delivered promptly to the floor. “Christ, you scared me.” He really had, too, considering the thump of her pulse. Her mind must have been elsewhere.

“You’re jumpy this morning,” Graves observed, an echo of her thoughts as he retrieved her portfolio of compositions. He normally would have done so with a wry grin or a little quirk to his smile, but at the moment he seemed nearly as distracted as she was. “You good?”

Oh, sure. Never better.

“Are _you_ good?” she countered in lieu of an answer, peering at him. 

“Hm? Yeah, I… nothing. Did you know,” he began, and then paused. “No, never mind—”

“Graves,” sighed Olympia. “Out with it.”

She and Graves had been friends since they were assigned to the same ensemble their first year, an easy camaraderie that had been tested early by Graves’ first breakup with Catastrophe. After the second breakup, Graves promised it wouldn’t happen again, and Olympia half-heartedly believed him. After the third, they mostly agreed there was no point taking sides. By then, not even Cat could blame her.

“Nothing,” said Graves reflexively, and then grimaced, catching the doubtful arch of Olympia’s brow. “I just met Julian Kinney,” he admitted.

“Oh.” Olympia’s throat tightened at the mention of Sam’s brother, which she chose to ignore. “He’s nice, isn’t he?” she said brightly.

“Nice? O, please.” Graves fussed with a loose tendril of hair, tucking it restlessly behind his ear. “Whether he is or he isn’t, I think we both know the last thing any of us ever wanted from Sam was _nice_.”

“Well, it’s not like he’s Sam,” said Olympia. “Of course he’s not Sam.”

But she understood the look on Graves’ face, because she, too, had been expecting something different from Julian Kinney. She’d expected Sam to walk into their lives in another form, triumphant and immortal like some kind of old-world myth, but she hadn’t. Instead it had been Julian, cold-voiced and standoffish and as unrecognizable from his sister as any human being with Sam Kinney’s blood could possibly be. Not that Olympia faulted him for it; it was his first day, after all, and of course everything could be a little overwhelming for someone arriving some weeks into the fall term, particularly when the someone in question was currently grieving the loss of someone else. But if Julian was truly the last piece of Sam Kinney that any of them would ever get to have… 

Selfishly, Olympia had hoped for something else. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t know it was him,” remarked Graves. Olympia’s immediate reflex was to reassure him, though it was moderately laughable that Graves had ever expected to know who Julian was on sight. She was confident Graves wouldn’t be able to recognize one of her brothers, or Skit’s sister, or Em’s brood of siblings, had any of them been the ones to die. It wasn’t exactly Graves’ nature to be attentive to their details the way they were to his.

“Well,” she offered soothingly, “Sam was really private about, you know. Her life, and everything before—”

“I know, I know,” said Graves, who wasn’t really listening. It was equally maddening and endearing the way his mind had a tendency to wander to other, wilder things. It was how composing with him could be; one moment they’d be discussing whether “dangerous” could be conceivably rhymed with “savin’ us” and the next he’d have changed the lyric entirely, plucking some new chord from thin air and delivering a verse like Athena from his head, fully formed. He had the sort of magic other people called genius, and he was charismatic, too, and unselfish—genuinely pleased with others’ successes—so that none of them could ever really be cross with him. That he knew it and almost certainly used it to his advantage did nothing to cheapen their affections.

Besides, there was always a little bit of Olympia that wanted to take care of Graves in some way. To remind him to eat or something, in case he’d forgotten again. (So maybe she _was_ the mom friend.) 

“Did you meet him?” asked Graves.

“Hm?” She shook herself, realizing Graves was giving her a scrutinizing look. “Sorry—Julian, you mean? Yes, I met him yesterday.”

“Did _you_ recognize him?”

“Well, Sam kept his picture in our room,” Olympia said, hedging a bit. She had known who Julian Kinney was at first glance, unlike Graves, but only in the sense that she’d been warned by Cat to expect him and, also, because basic deduction suggested he could be no one else. When she’d searched Julian’s face for evidence of Sam, though, she’d found nothing, so to say she recognized him was something of a stretch.

“She did?” asked Graves, looking puzzled.

“What?” Oh yes, the picture. It was a polaroid of Julian captured unawares, probably taken by Sam several years earlier. Age fifteen, maybe, or sixteen? Olympia wondered what had happened to it, and if she should have taken it and saved it for him, or if Julian himself even knew it existed. “I mean, I doubt you would have known that,” she reminded Graves with a shrug. “It’s not like you were ever in our room.” 

“True.” Graves cleared his throat, glancing down at his watch. “Fuck, I’m going to be late. Coffee later?” he asked, brushing a distracted kiss to her cheek

“Sure.” Olympia offered his arm a belated squeeze just as he departed. “See you.”

She watched him go for a moment while he took the stairs two at a time, head bent in thoughtful contemplation. Graves Nero was a favorite of nearly all of their professors; understandably, given how talented he was. It was difficult not to be overly fond of him because he generally lacked an ego, or at least the sort of ego Olympia expected from someone of his caliber. Maybe it had been growing up practically orphaned that made him that way. After all, who would Graves have been if not for the Archman twins? They were inextricable that way, part of each others’ origin stories, but it was Graves who always seemed especially approachable, if not entirely irresistible. The rest of them might never have been friends with Cat if not for Sam, but Graves was a foregone conclusion. He was like a flame of a person, magnetic and dazzling, never in any danger of burning out. 

Olympia turned to the door, smiling faintly to herself, and had another near-heart attack.

 _“Fuck_ , Lam—”

“I see Nero’s biannual return to my sister has done nothing to ease your inadvisable crush on him,” commented a mockingly droll Calamity Archman. (Speak of the devil and he shall appear, thought Olympia glumly.) “Don’t you ever get tired of waiting for him to notice you’re alive, Olympia?”

“Wonderful as always to see you, Lam,” muttered Olympia, tearing away from him and heading towards the center of campus. She caught the little pivot he made in her wake and groaned quietly to herself; he was like a spider, long-legged and toxically persistent. Once upon a time it had been tolerable, but it was growing less so by the day.

“You know, it consistently amazes me that none of you manage to see him for what he is,” commented Lam, who did not seem to care that Olympia was trying very hard not to listen to him or acknowledge him in any way. “I mean, especially you.”

“What does that mean, ‘ _especially’_ me?” asked Olympia hotly, falling for it yet again and spinning to face him. “Graves was your friend too, Lam, and—” 

At Lam’s condescending smirk of expectancy (if Graves’ natural expression was a playful _oh yeah?_ , Lam’s was a derisive _yeah, yeah_ ) Olympia cut herself off with a groan. “You know what? Never mind, just forget it—”

“You know what I think, Olympia? I think you’re more aware of Nero’s extracurricular activities than you pretend to be,” remarked Lam, one hand shoved leisurely into his pocket like they were out for some kind of mutually endurable stroll. “Or are you still insisting his obsession with Sam was purely academic?”

To that, Olympia stiffened. “You know Sam would never do that to Cat. Or to you.”

“Oh, _please_ ,” scoffed Lam. “Don’t martyr her, Stax. Sam’s questionable morality was her primary defining feature. Even Cat knows she loved nothing more than to periodically destroy things—”

“Don’t talk about Sam that way,” Olympia said, tiredly flinching. She felt acutely aware of how many hours she’d lost, the burden of sleeplessness weighing heavier on her bones the longer this conversation continued.

“Why, because she’s not here?” Lam countered, missing Olympia’s pained swallow. “If she were, she’d be the first to say it, Olympia, that you and the others have gone and lost the plot _completely_ —”

Her undercurrent of agitation spiked, banging like a knock to her temples.

“Well, she’s _not_ here, is she?” snapped Olympia, abandoning what remained of her patience. “She’s _dead_ , Lam, and in case you’ve forgotten, that’s on you!”

It was a low blow and they both knew it. She watched him take it in stages, first the shotgun kick to the chest and then the aftermath, a spray of debris to singe the edges of accusation. 

And truth.

But for once in his life Lam Archman had shut his goddamn mouth, and for that, Olympia couldn’t be sorry. She _refused_ to be sorry. Yes, she remembered seeing his face when they’d all found out and yes, she knew from somewhere truer than her current state of grief that nobody had ever loved Sam Kinney like Lam did, but at the moment it was what he needed to hear, and for that, Olympia Stax absolutely, positively refused to be sorry.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean t-”

“No, you did, you definitely did,” he said curtly. “And it’s a relief, honestly, because I was beginning to wonder whether you were just going along with all of it because of Cat. But now that I know that you actually, seriously think Sam’s death is on my hands… Well, I feel much better, really. Honestly. I hope you’re sleeping well, by the way,” he added nastily, because of course he knew she was not. Because of course he had been there more than once when Sam had crawled out of her own bed and into Olympia’s to hold her, to whisper to her _it’s just a dream, it’s just a nightmare and we’ll write it in the morning; we’ll write it together in the morning and then I promise, it’ll be gone._

“You’re a terror, Daydream,” Sam used to say to soothe her. “Night or day, never forget it. You’re a stone-cold bitch and I wouldn’t change a hair on your beautiful head.”

But Sam was gone now, so Olympia gave Calamity Archman the meanest look she could possibly summon and cast out one of her demons on her own.

“I haven’t forgotten what Sam was. Nor have I forgotten what you are, or what you did,” she said flatly. “And if you know what’s good for you, Lam, you’ll stay the fuck away from me. And Graves. And Cat.”

Lam’s eyes narrowed and he lurched away from her without a word, though Olympia couldn’t prevent herself from dealing one more blow. That was the thing about cruelty, because malice was entropic, it grew to take up space. Once you lifted the lid once, it all came spilling out.

“Do you honestly think she loved you?” she called after him. “If we were all just a game to her, Lam, then you were the easiest one.”

He didn’t turn back and she didn’t expect him to. Her head was pounding and the nightmares were only getting worse, so Olympia headed back to the dorms, downing one of Sam’s little pink pills and drifting dreamlessly out for a nap.

* * *

A similar reaction to the one Graves Nero had given him in response to their introduction by Catastrophe Archman had been following Julian all day.

“Kinney? Wait. Seriously? As in…?”

“Yes,” Julian was forced to say. “As in Sam Kinney. Yes.”

It was a tiresome repetition, no less unrelenting than the abominable heat, though he was at least more prepared for it on every subsequent occasion than he had been the first time. It had not been one of Julian’s finer moments, really, to stand there guiltily without any real awareness of what he technically felt guilty for. Was it because of his moment with Cat? Or with Nero, whose name was really Graves? Was it both or somehow neither, and for fuck’s sake, was he going to manage to speak a word?

Ultimately he’d mumbled something unintelligible and hurried back to Archman’s classroom, only to then find himself thrown out. “Thurston will have a word with you this afternoon,” said the professor, and that had been that. Julian had floated along silently through the rest of his course schedule (outside of “yes, as in Sam Kinney,” little else needed to be said) until five minutes into his Introduction to Bard Theory class.

The theory professor, a tall, fairly young and noticeably stiff-looking man called Professor Iver, gave a funny sort of half-frown at the note that came delivered. “Kinney?” he said, not quite looking up, and Julian withheld a sigh.

“Yes, Kinney, as in—”

“Thurston would like to see you in the Tower,” Iver interrupted, crumpling the note and tossing it aside. 

“What, now?” asked Julian.

“Yes, now,” said Iver. “Unless you have somewhere very pressing to be?”

“I thought I was supposed to be here,” said Julian.

“Well, it appears you thought wrong,” said Iver, before turning to the board and beginning to write something down. Julian, who wasn’t entirely sure whether an apology was owed or not, slid his notebook back into his bag and rose to his feet, skirting the many too-curious stares from his fellow infantile first years. They had not known Sam personally and therefore did not ask about her, but they had clearly sorted out some other things about him that Julian personally wished they hadn’t.

“I heard he’s so much older than the rest of us because he had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized,” one first year whispered to another during lunch.

“Was that before or after that girl died on campus?” asked the other.

“Before,” said Julian, startling them both. “But your attention to chronology is noted.”

He’d thought it would be funny to scare them like that (and admittedly, it was) but he regretted it immediately after. He was supposed to see them every day, after all, and alienating himself from the other novices would do him no good. He did not yet understand where he stood with Catastrophe, who had greeted her boyfriend with a kiss, or with Graves, who had returned it, and all Julian _did_ know for certain was that the rest of Sam’s friends were unaware of his estrangement. Had Sam pretended to still be in contact with him, or had she simply not mentioned that she wasn’t? It irked him not to know, but it seemed easier to blindly wonder. He doubted he would like the answer if he asked.

In the end, it didn’t matter whether or not he’d burned any first year bridges. “Archman is pulling rank,” said Thurston without preamble, not even looking up when Julian entered her office. “You’re being moved, Mr. Kinney.”

“From what to what?” asked Julian, bracing himself for the possibility that they’d be dismissing him from the school itself. He wouldn’t put it past Archman, given the first impression they’d each had of the other. Julian did not have a very favorable view of self-aggrandizing authority figures (of which Professor Archman was undoubtedly one), nor did they typically take great pleasure in catering to him.

“From first year to third,” replied Thurston with a recognizable look of irritation. Julian was surprised to hear it until Thurston continued, “Professor Archman seems to feel your specific talent might… unnerve the other students.”

“So it has nothing to do with my abilities?” he asked. Or, more accurately, with the appearance of Professor Archman’s dead wife.

“Very little, I’m afraid,” Thurston said, dropping a file on her desk with a thunk. She and Archman must have had an antagonistic relationship; while Julian suspected it had been Thurston’s intention from the start to move him, he could tell she was annoyed that Archman had managed the last word. “I did choose to keep you enrolled in Iver’s introductory theory class,” Thurston continued, “since I hardly think you can be expected to keep up with the more advanced students, but—ah, Nero,” she said, glancing up as the now all too familiar figure of Graves Nero materialized in the doorway. “I hope I haven’t called you away from something more pressing.”

“Not at all,” said Graves, nodding to Julian. If he felt any lingering discomfort over their introduction that morning, he didn’t show it. “How can I help?”

“Have a seat, please,” Thurston suggested, waving Graves into a chair. “Have you met Julian Kinney?”

“I have,” said Graves, with a nod at Julian. _You like me_ , his expression said again, though today he’d somehow tacked on an extra element of _and I like you_. “I take it you need someone to show him the ropes, Professor?”

“He’s being transferred to your performance class,” said Thurston with a nod. “He’ll also be in your composition class and your ensemble this term.”

Graves’ easy smile wavered. “I’d actually been hoping to speak to you about my ensemble, Professor—”

“I’ve seen your request, Mr. Nero, and it should not surprise you to hear that it is denied,” said Thurston, scribbling something into Julian’s amended class schedule. “Whatever personal issues you may have with Mr. Archman, I encourage you to get over them. And quickly,” she added, glancing up. “Am I clear?”

“Yes.” The smile was back. “Of course.”

“Good.” Thurston slid a glance to Julian, who was trying very hard not to be extremely interested in whatever the personal issues between Lam Archman and Graves Nero might have been. “I’m sure Miss Archman will gladly be of assistance as well, and Miss Stax. I hope you will feel at home here,” she added to Julian. “We very much hope to see you succeed.”

Apparently so, he did not add. “Thank you, Professor.”

“Well, off you go, then,” said Thurston. “You have class in ten minutes, do you not? Scoot.” 

She handed the amended schedule to Julian and waved them off like a pair of wayward children, turning her attention to her ringing phone. 

Graves took the Tower stairwell and then the administrative halls with both ease and restrained silence, which Julian was more than happy to allow. He wasn’t sure what exactly there was to say—or what specifically they would be acknowledging—so it didn’t surprise him that Graves waited to break the silence until after they’d embarked across the grassy knoll between buildings.

“You might have mentioned you were an orpheus the other night,” Graves commented. He had a long, loping stride and did not look at his feet while he walked, like Julian did. Instead he looked straight ahead, hiding from nothing, comfortable with everything.

“I wasn’t technically aware that I was,” said Julian, which he knew was not entirely fair. He could have been more forthcoming with his abilities, true, but it wasn’t like Graves had offered any personal information, either. “I told you I’d never seen any other bards before,” he reminded Graves. “I don’t exactly have a lot of experience with what’s supposed to happen.”

“True, and I guess you still don’t.” Graves’ sidelong grin was easy, effortless, and Julian was abruptly reminded of a line from one of Sam’s songs: _He talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young_. 

“I knew I knew you from somewhere,” Graves remarked, more to himself than to Julian that time. “Though I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that you were Sam Kinney’s brother.”

“Did you know her?” asked Julian.

“Did any of us really know Sam?” Graves replied with a chuckle, then a shake of his head. “She was chronically averse to being seen.”

A flash of the former Miss Teen Las Vegas strutted by in Julian’s memory, blowing him an irreverent kiss. The night she won she’d gone on a total rampage; he’d never known where she’d gotten the drugs, but it probably hadn’t been that hard. Ultimately he only remembered seeing stars everywhere that night; in the sky, in her eyes, facedown on the table.

_For Julian._

“I’m not sure you’re right about that,” replied Julian, shaking the memory off in silence.

“Oh, she wanted to be experienced,” Graves allowed. “But known? Never.” He made a small, restless motion through his hair, half-smiling into nothing. “I think we were all a little bit in love with her, to tell you the truth.”

It wasn’t the first time Julian had heard that. He’d gotten some variant of it from everyone after she left; the waitstaff at their favorite diner, the neighbors, the parking attendants at the convention center, the owners of the casinos where she’d performed. “Yeah, she had that effect on people.”

He expected Graves to blandly agree, or possibly to wax poetic about Sam the way Olympia and Skit had done, but instead he looked at Julian, considering him.

“You’ve got a little bit of it, actually,” Graves commented. “What she had.”

“What? No.” Disbelief, not self-deprecation. Julian had no illusions about what Sam possessed that he did not.

“You do,” Graves said, shrugging. “Not the same kind, obviously—”

Jesus Christ. “Yeah, obviously.”

“—but still,” Graves finished. “You have something that makes people want to know you. Down to the quick of it, that’s what Sam was. She was intimidating, sure, but she was also someone everyone wanted to know. Even if deep down she was more afraid of them than they were of her.”

That was a remarkably accurate assessment. So much so that Julian felt another pang of guilt, like if Sam knew anyone had said it, she’d instantaneously break down. Or break something.

“She used to say that people would always want pieces of us,” Julian said, surprising himself by speaking it aloud. He’d meant only to think it in silence. “Sometimes when she told me things she’d say ‘that’s a piece of me, hold onto it,’ but I think she’d only do it because—” He stopped. “Because she was afraid she might give all of herself away if she didn’t.”

Graves stopped when they reached the back door of the church, glancing at Julian.

“I guess that explains a lot of things,” he said, and then proceeded down the same basement stairs that Cat had led him down that morning.

The atmosphere was different now that it was late afternoon; for one thing, the room wasn’t eerily empty, and it was flooded from the slatted windows with a softer, warmer light, more golden. 

Cat was perched atop one of the desks near the front of the room, facing Olympia and Skit. She looked up when Graves appeared on the stairs, greeting him with a smile, and then her brow twitched with surprise at the sight of Julian. Sun from the basement window smoothed across the platinum sheen of hair as she tilted her head, pleasantly bemused.

“Hey, babe.” Graves bent to kiss her cheek. “You obviously know Julian already,” he added, sliding into the desk on her right and then leaning over at a sharp nudge from Skit, who was scribbling something in what looked to be a panic. Olympia smiled at Julian, who nodded in greeting, and Cat twisted around to sit properly in her seat, dark eyes falling on his with something he might have flatteringly called eagerness.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, and he shrugged, filling the vacant seat on her left.

“Apparently I’ll scare the children,” he replied in a low voice, and Cat laughed.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Well, I’ll admit, it was a little unnerving,” she said with a wry grimace.

“I take it most people don’t see ghosts when you sing?” 

It was a serious question that he had tried to phrase lightly, as he was hoping to know very soon what it was Cat Archman could do. For better or worse, it was becoming increasingly important to Julian to hear her voice. He could tell from the way others regarded her that she was exceptional in some way, and he wanted to have words, the requisite knowledge to explain it. Part of him suspected he’d been unduly influenced by exposure to Graves Nero’s magic, which he hoped would fade the more he experienced from the others.

Cat, however, did not take the bait. “It wasn’t a ghost though, was it?” she murmured. “Could she have spoken back to us, do you think? If we’d tried it?”

Julian supposed they would have to do considerably more research if she wanted an answer, though before he could say so, Professor Archman had already walked into the room, quieting the class with a small throat-clearing tic of impatience. Em and Reid, who’d slipped into the classroom late, filed into the desks behind Julian’s, and it occurred to him with an eerie sense of displacement that this must have been how they all met.

A class precisely like this one, only it had been Sam in his place instead.

“As you may have noticed, we have a new student joining us today,” Archman announced, referencing Julian without mentioning him by name. Immediately, though, several people around the room began whispering to each other, and Archman cleared his throat again, plainly annoyed. “So for today, we’ll continue our peer critiques to allow Mr. Kinney to adjust to the way we do things around here.” There was another brief passing of whispers at that, and then Professor Archman announced—rather ambiguously, in Julian’s opinion—“Archman. Why don’t you start us off?”

The room abruptly fell silent, Cat’s shoulders stiffening imperceptibly. Evidently she was not the Archman in question; when Julian glanced at her, she merely gave him a dismissive shrug, as if to say _it’s nothing._

“Calamity,” Archman said. “Do you have a performance prepared?”

There was a moment of strained pause.

“Sure,” said Lam in a dull voice, rising to his feet and striding towards his father from the back of the room. It was the first time Julian had seen his roommate since yesterday, and he was unsurprised to see Lam’s gaze skipping over him as if there was nothing of interest there. 

Lam did, however, fall to a rigid halt beside Graves’ desk, as if the latter had said something in an undertone. Cat looked suddenly uncomfortable, her eyes falling to her lap, and after a hairline pause, Lam continued walking without any change in expression. 

Julian leaned towards Cat. “What did Graves say?”

 _Nothing,_ she mouthed. Meanwhile, Lam Archman spun to face the room. He wore a plain t-shirt, thinned in spots and overworn, the neckline stretched out and the hem uneven. Objectively speaking, he looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week or showered in a month.

“Wrote this for a friend of mine,” Lam said.

“Fuck,” muttered Cat. 

As with Graves’ performance the night prior, and with Julian’s that morning, there was no exceptional fanfare. No waving of wands or casting of incantations or anything. Lam simply opened his mouth and just like that, the room filled with the sound of something; the wail of an electric guitar, which he seemed to have conjured at will.

The song was surprisingly upbeat, almost funk. Julian glanced around expecting incredulity, but everyone was concentrating very hard on looking as if they weren’t paying rapt attention.

“ _I know the score like the back of my hand_ ,” sang Lam with a put-on air of polish, an overbroad grin. “ _Them other boys, I don’t give a damn. They kiss on the ring, I carry the crown. Nothing can break, nothing can break me down—_ ”

It was immediately apparent the song was satire at best, parody at worst. It was difficult to explain precisely how this was obvious, given that Julian knew next to nothing about who or what Lam Archman actually was, but the performance was unquestionably an exaggerated imitation of none other than Graves Nero, who sat silent and unmoving in the front row as Lam’s footwork deftly made its way in his direction.

Lam swept an invisible curl from his eyes, pairing the motion with an emphatic hip thrust and a wink Julian knew to be accurate, having received one himself the day prior. “ _Don’t need no advice, I got a plan. I know the direction, the lay of the land. Them other boys, I don’t give a damn. I’m_ the man _—_ ” 

He leapt atop Cat’s desk and briefly, so briefly it was almost imperceptible, she met her twin’s eye with a furious glare before directing her attention away. He smiled down at her—a sort of rage-smile, like the one Sam used to give anyone eyeing the cheap fabric of her “going-out” dresses—and then shifted to Julian’s desk.

“ _I got gas in the tank—_ ” Here he did a little criss-cross with his feet, spinning in place so naturally that even Julian could see that Lam Archman was as instinctually given to performance as his sister had been. “ _I got money in the bank, I got news for you baby, you’re looking at the man_.”

Lam glanced down at Julian mirthlessly, and Julian stared back.

“ _I got skin in the game_ ,” Lam sang, crouching down to brush Julian’s desk with the tips of his fingers. “ _I got a household name. I got news for you baby, you’re looking at the man_.”

Just as quickly as he’d jumped up, Lam was back down, circling the open space at the front of the room and locking eyes with Olympia, who looked away.

“ _When it comes to Friday, I always earn. Don’t try to teach me, got nothing to learn, ‘cause baby I’m gifted, you see what I mean? USDA—_ ” And here another pop of his hips. “ _Certi-fied lean_.”

Underneath the vaudeville of Lam’s performance—the shameless caricature of it all—there was an unmistakable relish mixed with repulsion that Julian found intensely familiar. It was Sam, all over it, Sam from head to toe, even if it was somehow Lam who was wearing a mask of Graves. This was Samara Kinney’s exuberance, her charisma, her ability to look straight at something while willing it to hell—and most importantly, it was her misery. It was the strings that even Sam herself acknowledged; the way she and her talent could not be extricated from each other, and therefore she could never be herself within it, but without it she was nothing at all.

“ _Right hand to God_ ,” rasped Lam in something Julian was sure was closer to his real voice, “ _first in command, my testimony when I take the stand… Who’s the man_?”

He locked eyes directly with Graves, and while Julian wouldn’t have expected Graves to react unfavorably to any of this—it was a rather cheap ploy for attention, in Julian’s opinion—he could see Lam had successfully struck a chord somehow. Graves was fuming, Cat was focusing motionless on her hands, Olympia was gritting her teeth and staring staunchly out the window and Skit, bless her, was paying no attention at all, still fretting over her annotations. 

Lam turned his head just an inch, a fraction of a degree, and when his gaze found Julian’s, it was filled with something. 

Pity.

“ _I don’t give a damn_ ,” spat Lam. “ _I’m the man_.” 

The song ended with silence. Lam took his seat and did not say another word for the rest of class. Nor was he home when Julian finally fell into bed, exhausted and pooling with sweat, Sam’s laughter fading away only when he opened his eyes, unaware that he had ever closed them.

* * *

The conservatory was exceedingly small, so while there was the benefit of having all his classes with Cat, Graves, and everyone else who was happy to embrace his existence, there was also no escaping Lam. This seemed to be primarily an issue for Cat, who consistently looked toward her brother with the strain of either annoyance or indecision.

“Oh, don’t mind them,” murmured Olympia, following Julian’s glance. She’d caught up to him early that morning and insisted she sit between him and Reid, which was… fine, really. In Julian’s opinion, she was trying much harder than she needed to, but there didn’t seem to be a good way to say that. “They really only got along when Sam was around to mediate,” Olympia explained. 

“Are they competitive with each other or something?” asked Julian, who hadn’t really known any other twins or even siblings. Aside from himself and Sam, of course—but all signs suggested they’d been something else entirely.

“No,” said Reid. “Well—” He glanced at Olympia, who sighed.

“Lam and Graves grew up together, basically,” she explained, her voice quickening like she didn’t want to get caught discussing it. “He was practically adopted by the Archmans. But then Graves started dating Cat in… what was it, high school?” she asked Reid, who shrugged in answer. “Something like that. You know, small towns,” she said with a gesture to their surroundings. “Seems a bit starved for choice, I guess you could say.”

“So Lam… didn’t like Graves dating his sister or something?” guessed Julian. “Or his sister dating his friend, I guess?”

“Hm? Oh no, he was fine with it. They were all inseparable, pretty much, until Cat and Graves broke up sometime at the end of fall term our first year. Oh, but that was also fine,” Olympia clarified, catching Julian’s expression and hurrying to explain, “Honestly, we’re not sure what went wrong between the three of them, but it probably had something to do with—”

She broke off and looked away.

“Sam,” said Julian. “You can say her name.”

“Oh no, I know,” Olympia said, too-brightly. “I know that, I just…”

She trailed off. 

“I thought Cat and my sister were friends?” Julian asked in a low voice. He wondered, with a looming sense of disappointment, if all of this boiled down to some sort of love quadrangle with Sam as the lynchpin. She’d have liked it, probably, the attention—it wasn’t like she’d been able to go to high school to get her fill—so maybe she’d simply taken advantage of her opportunity for melodrama and pettiness. But in Julian’s mind, Sam was far more interesting than that. 

Besides, Sam wanted people in her life far too desperately to throw them away over something as meaningless as sex. She could have that far too easily.

“Sam and Cat were two peas in a pod,” Reid assured Julian, adding, “Graves and Cat have always been sort of… on and off, anyway.” This he said with a glance at Olympia, who seemed to be the person in the group who knew things—or, more accurately, the person who decided what was appropriate to know.

Doing as the Romans did, Julian turned to face her. “So right now they’re…?”

“On,” Olympia said firmly. “Very much on.”

She didn’t look directly at him. From this angle, Julian noticed for the first time the pale shadows beneath her eyes, the bloodshot look of them. He thought of Sam struggling beneath Destiny’s little makeup sponge, wrenching away from the bottle of gone-in-a-week drugstore concealer. “Haggard,” he suddenly remembered, was one of Destiny Kinney’s favorite words. _You need to sleep or you’ll look haggard. Is that what you want, Samara? To look haggard in front of the judges?_

Errata called upon Graves often, as did Welch, later in the day. It was becoming increasingly obvious to Julian that Lam Archman’s distortion of Graves Nero was based very strongly on the actuality of him. Graves was confident and un-coy about his talent, and though he was largely unpretentious and unthreatening, people did not typically disagree with him. At one point Graves responded to a theoretical argument with “I don’t know” and nobody else deigned to chime in until Welch looked at Lam.

“Mr. Archman,” he said, sounding weary. Lam, Julian noticed, had not raised his hand or even appeared to be listening.

Lam’s response, which was unintelligible to Julian, sounded like it came directly from a book on music theory. He said something about timbre and the components of magical perspicuity and Graves, who apparently _did_ know something now, jumped in with a response about how intensity was a more compelling argument; that if the magical components were part voice and part will, then there was more basis in the argument of will as the primary factor. 

“Otherwise,” concluded Graves, “anyone could be taught to do it.”

Lam replied, “Clearly they already are,” sounding bored.

“Thank you Archman, Nero, that’s enough,” said Welch, hastily.

Julian noticed that Cat was generally silent during these lectures, her eyes fixed on her notes, but he guessed that it must have been a recent change. Both Errata and Welch would briefly allow their attention to linger on her before shifting purposefully away. 

His least favorite class was unquestionably his first year bard theory course with Iver, who had what Julian considered to be something of a pompous air. For being the youngest of their professors, Iver seemed to be the least warm, and certainly the least interested in their contributions. He also seemed to dislike Julian in particular, perhaps because he kept hammering home his belief that bardship wasn’t something to be simply picked up at will. Julian was happy to remain well out of firing range in that class, particularly because his mystique had only increased since his transfer to the upper division performance track. More than once he had the sensation that others in the room had recently been discussing him; silence upon his entry was so stilted that Julian could practically taste his own name in the air.

Eventually he made it to Friday afternoon, walking out of Iver’s class and back to the dorms with the expectation that, as usual, Olympia would come by to coax him to dinner and Cat would be there, maybe, or maybe not (she was sometimes with Graves, sometimes in an unknown location—“She’s writing,” the others would say as if that meant something). Lam would be nowhere to be found, Em would mostly ignore Julian while Reid tried to be nice in a slightly unengaged way, and Skit, a very high-energy sort of person, would go on a rant about something totally unrelated while waving her fork around. 

Julian appreciated these periods of togetherness, with or without Cat and Graves, because it allowed him to learn certain things he considered important. For example, he learned that Olympia was Sam’s roommate, though Sam and Cat had been the truly inseparable ones. Apparently they were almost always wearing the other’s clothes, to the point where Reid once ran to catch up with the person he thought was Sam only to realize it was actually Cat in Sam’s red dress. 

They had their own stories too, of course. Em had been assigned to Skit’s room, which in everyone’s opinion had been a hilarious sequence of events. Evidently they’d hated each other so much that Skit had challenged Em to a physical fight within the first week—“She threw a literal gauntlet,” said Reid, tearing with laughter—and the administration was forced to split them up, which ultimately brought them together somehow. Em, meanwhile, had been roommates with Reid ever since.

“It’s really not that hard to coexist,” said Reid. “You just put Em in a nice sunny spot and don’t interrupt.”

“Like a cat,” said Skit fondly, tousling Em’s hair until Em shoved her somewhat less fondly away.

Reid was especially loyal to Olympia because she and Sam had stood up for him at some point in their first year despite the fact that they barely knew each other. He was religious, which many students at the conservatory were not—and which, indeed, Olympia herself was not. “She’s just like that,” said Reid, shrugging.

Em and Olympia did not get on particularly well according to Skit, though she did not tell Julian that until both were out of the room. “O’s a lot for some people,” Skit said as if that explained everything, which it kind of did. Apparently Em did not enjoy people unless they kept to a reasonable amount.

“What about Sam?” asked Julian, since his sister seemed like exactly the sort of person Em would find wholly intolerable.

“Em wouldn’t be Em if not for Sam,” replied Skit firmly. She didn’t explain this, either, but Julian felt he could fill in the blanks well enough.

On Friday night there was a party. An impromptu thing, as the others explained later, nothing formal, relatively frequent. Up in his room, which was once again empty, Julian had woken in the dark from an unplanned nap (the constant drain of classes was exhausting, particularly for someone who hadn’t received any formal schooling in well over a decade) to follow the sound of voices to something behind the dorms that was passably a garden, though it was mostly overgrown planters around a courtyard of cement. It seemed to him exceptionally bold for people to be drinking openly on campus, but nobody seemed concerned about being caught. He assumed the faculty and administrators were quick to leave the students to their weekends.

“—heard it was some kind of mental break,” someone was saying from behind a blind corner, and Julian froze, pausing out of sight.

“It was like a hospital, right? He’s like schizo or something, I heard.”

“What? That’s racist.”

“How the actual fuck is that racist?”

“Are you drunk?”

“I don’t know, shut up. Apparently his sister was on drugs or something.”

“Who?”

“The girl who drowned over the summer.”

“Wait, what?”

“You didn’t hear about that?”

“Wait, she drowned? Like _drowned_ drowned, for real?”

“Is there another way to drown? Jesus—”

“But I thought there were no drugs in her system?”

“That’s just the administration trying to keep things on the down low. I mean what else could have happened?”

“I heard she was cheating on her boyfriend.”

“What boyfriend?”

“You know. Archman. The weird one.”

“No, no way, it was Graves Nero—”

“No, that’s who she was cheating with.” 

_Somebody told me_ , Graves suddenly sang in Julian’s ear, _that you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year—_

“Are you fucking kidding me? Both of them? Lucky bitch—”

“Graves Nero? But he’s been with Cat Archman for like, ever.”

“Okay, so maybe they were both cheating, I don’t fuckin’ know—”

“No, they were broken up then. Wait, weren’t they?”

“Wasn’t she pregnant? Sam Kinney, not Cat Archman. God, can you even imagine?”

“Oh my god wait, _was_ she?” 

“I bet she was, that makes total sense.”

“Yeah, I mean I heard she told Archman she was done with him and that’s why he—”

“Hey,” came a voice in Julian’s ear, and he blinked. “Don’t listen to that shit.”

He turned to find Olympia at his elbow, her eyes more than a small amount of unfocused. She had a red cup in her hand, the side of it marked with traces of pink lipstick that only faintly remained on her lips. 

“I’m not,” he lied.

She gave him a bleary-eyed look of disagreement. 

“Well, is any of it true?” he asked her.

“No,” she said.

He was pretty sure she was lying.

“I thought you said—”

“Look, nobody wanted Sam dead. Nobody wanted her gone.” Olympia looked miserable. “It was probably just an accident.”

“It was _probably_ an accident?” echoed Julian, but Olympia wasn’t listening.

“You know, I have to say, I think it’s a little fucked up that we weren’t invited to the funeral,” she said, which was something Julian had been privately expecting to hear, albeit not from Olympia. “We just wanted a chance to say goodbye.”

Julian cleared his throat. “I know, but my mom had no idea you were—”

“I mean I heard them on the phone, you know. They talked once a month, every month at midnight on the first of the month. Sam tried to pretend she wasn’t doing it, you know? I covered for her because she wanted us to believe she was this super dark… like… I don’t know, like ‘fuck my mom, life is meaningless’ or something. She was all about that emo shit and like, a tortured artist, but not really, you know what I mean? Not actually, because I _heard_ her—”

“Wait,” Julian said, staring at Olympia. “Sam was in contact with Destiny before she died?”

“She was obsessed with it,” said Olympia. “With Destiny.”

She lurched forward to touch Julian’s cheek, giving him a sorrowful, hungry glance.

“I hate that I don’t see her in you at all,” she whispered.

Julian swallowed hard.

Then, thankfully, someone appeared behind them. “You good, O?” asked Graves, sliding an arm around her waist and stepping deftly between her and Julian. “You really did some work already,” he noted, giving her a quizzical, half-amused glance while he sniffed her cup. “What’s in here, kid?”

“Oh my god, are they singing?” asked Olympia distractedly, pointing to a group of second year students who had pulled out a guitar. “Graves, come on—”

“O, take it easy—” But she was already stumbling towards them with the single-mindedness of a girl who’d definitely had too much to drink, leaving Graves to turn to Julian with a shrug.

“She’s had a rough go of it,” he said in an undertone, beckoning Julian after him while he wandered over to a keg in the corner. “Don’t tell anyone, but she gets night terrors. Doesn’t sleep well.” He poured one for Julian, then one for himself. “Sam was the only one who really knew how to handle them.”

“Night terrors?” echoed Julian. The beer in his hand was lukewarm and frothy.

“Screaming,” said Graves. “Thrashing. Sometimes paralysis.”

Julian imagined waking up paralyzed and shuddered. “Is that related to…?”

“The magic? Dunno.” Graves shrugged, watching Olympia from afar while she climbed unsteadily onto a chair. Reid, nearby, shouted something in encouragement; a whoop of exuberance that suggested he was on his way to being equally drunk. “I think all of us have our things,” Graves murmured, sliding a glance to Julian before looking away when Olympia started to sing.

Julian caught sight of Cat from afar, a flash of bright from the corner of his eye. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt over shorts that were barely visible, her hair loose and falling to her waist. She was sort of half-smiling at Olympia in a politely embarrassed way.

“ _We took a back road, we’re gonna look at the stars_ ,” sang Olympia. “ _We took a back road in my car down to the ocean, it’s only water and sand, and in the ocean we’ll hold hands, but I don’t really like you, apologetically dressed in the best, put on a heartbeat glide—_ ”

“She’s good,” said Julian. Olympia’s voice was sweet and earnest, almost childlike. The song itself was winding, stream-of-consciousness, like a journal entry filled with teen angst.

“She is,” Graves agreed, expressionless. Julian caught Cat looking from Olympia to Graves, her brow furrowing slightly.

“ _—without an answer, the thunder speaks for the sky, and on the cold, wet dirt I cried—_ ”

Reid and Skit gave another loud whoop, though Em, beside them, did not. Of the three of them, only Em’s hand was absent a drink.

“ _Don’t you want to come with me_?” Olympia sang, turning toward Julian and Graves with a dizzy, breathless smile. “ _Don’t you want to feel my bones on your bones? It’s only natural—_ ”

Julian noticed Lam in the thin crowd for the first time, spotting him when he rose sharply to his feet. Lam had glanced across the courtyard to Cat, who stared back, telegraphing something that looked suspiciously like _Stay out of it_. 

“ _—and it's gone to the dogs in my mind, I always hear them when the dead of night comes calling—”_

Lam’s eyes narrowed and Cat pivoted away, disappearing.

 _“—save me from this fight, but they can never wrong this right. Don't you wanna come with me? Don't you wanna feel my bones on your bones?_ ”

Julian glanced at Graves, whose jaw clenched before it forcefully relaxed. He applauded Olympia when the song was over, though she, meanwhile, nearly toppled from the chair, Em thrusting out a hand to help her while Graves turned away.

“It’s not her fault,” Graves said to no one. “She isn’t sleeping well.”

Em led Olympia away, holding her cup out of reach and then tossing it discreetly behind them.

“Another beer?” Graves asked Julian.

“No, thanks.”

“Good of you.” Graves downed the rest of his cup with a wink, turning back to the keg as someone else came over to him. Julian, meanwhile, took a step in the direction Cat had gone, observing that the others were mostly too distracted to notice.

She was unmissable in the moonlight, which shone silvery on her hair. She’d tied it up in a knot, her legs curled under her like a fawn. She was writing, and for the first time Julian understood it: _She gets like that when she’s writing._

He stepped on a twig and Cat blinked herself out of a fog, gaze fixing uncertainly on him.

“I could leave,” he offered quickly, “if you’re—”

“Oh, it’s you. No, no.” She beckoned to him, patting the ground beside her. “Sit.”

He sat, and she gave him a distant smile.

“Quite a show, huh?” she said, gesturing to the courtyard.

He hesitated, and then, “To be honest, I’m not actually sure what I was watching.”

Cat laughed, genuinely.

“People get absolutely certifiable around here by the end of the week,” she said, and then stopped. “I,” she began, and winced. “I didn’t mean—”

Obviously she had heard her fair share of rumors about him, too.

“It doesn’t insult me,” Julian said. “I was hospitalized. It’s not like it’s some personal attack on my character or something, it’s just the truth. Two people almost died and it was entirely my fault.”

Cat exhaled heavily. “I’m just… I didn’t mean t-”

“Did Sam know?” he asked her. “That it happened.”

Cat looked down at her hands. There was a sparrow tattooed on the inside of her hand, on the stretch between her thumb and forefinger, and Julian realized he had seen the tattoo before on his projection of Sam; the version of her that appeared whenever he sang in private. They must have gotten them at the same time.

“Yes,” Cat said quietly. “Your mother told her.”

So it was true, then. Olympia had been right. Drunk and plagued by nightmares, but right.

“How often did they talk?” asked Julian. 

He could sense the wrongness in his tone, the ring of anguish. Cat obviously heard it as well and hesitated to answer, hedging with a half-truth. “I don’t necessarily know i-”

“Was it really once a month?” he pressed her, cutting her off. He didn’t think he could stand to sit through a lie.

Cat looked away, resigned. “Yes,” she admitted. “Sam called Destiny on the first of every month.”

Julian said nothing. 

“They never spoke for long,” Cat assured him, as if the duration could possibly make a difference to him. “Ten minutes, maybe. Probably less.” A pause. “I think it was more of a compulsion for her than anything. Morbid curiosity or something, you know?”

Silence.

“I don’t know how the others know about… you know,” Cat said, cautiously referencing Julian’s six month residency at St. Dymphna’s. “Sam told me about it in confidence. She might have told Olympia, maybe Lam, but I don’t see them telling other people about it.” She fixed him with a look of both sternness and apology, like she wanted to be right; like she was sure, but uncertain. “We’ve never talked about it, I promise.”

“It’s easy to google,” Julian said.

“Sam was worried about you,” Cat rushed to add. “She asked about you all the time, I know she did—”

“But she never called me,” said Julian. 

Except once. _I don’t know Jules, I can’t explain it, I just have a weird feeling about things and honestly I might not be here much longer—_

Just the once, and by then it was too late.

Cat drew her knees into her chest. 

“What happened?” she asked him softly.

He said nothing.

Cat inched closer, brushing her fingers against his forearm.

“It doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “We all have something. Demons, if you want to call them that. Monsters inside us. It’s what the music is for,” she murmured, and gave a small, dry laugh. “It’s about letting them out safely, so they don’t hurt us when they inevitably try to escape.”

“What are yours?” Julian asked, his voice still edged with something. Not malice, never malice. _You don’t even know what it is to want to destroy things_ , Sam had told him once. _You don’t have a destructive bone in your body, Jules._ But there was definitely something there.

Pain.

Cat looked up and smiled wistfully, sorrowfully, into nothing. “Sam used to say she and I were the same soul living out our alternate realities at once,” she remarked. “People just assume Lam’s the other half of me, but he isn’t, not really. Sam is.”

“Was,” she exhaled.

She reached for Julian’s hand and he gave it to her. The heat had calmed down a little, just slightly. It wasn’t suffocating him so much.

“I think she just didn’t want to disappoint you,” Cat said. “She thought of you as being better, I think, than she was.” She smiled thinly. “And certainly better than I am.”

“Clearly you had the story wrong,” Julian said, pulling away from her to stare at his hands. “My public defender got me six months probation with a psych evaluation, but the fact is I nearly killed someone. I was driving recklessly and I had no excuse. Honestly, I’m glad I had to plead guilty because I _was_ guilty, episode or no episode. Maybe I didn’t know at that moment, maybe not when I got behind the wheel, but I knew—I _knew_ there was something wrong with me, I’d known it for years, and—”

He quieted when Cat took his face between her palms.

“What you did—what you’ve done—that’s not who you are,” she told him softly. “It’s not who you are, Julian, and Sam knew that.”

She touched his temple soothingly, running her thumb over it. She hummed something and then stopped, like the sound had gotten caught in her throat.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing, I… nothing,” she said. “It’s just… really hard to find something to sing about right now.”

He shifted closer and Cat leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing out.

“I know,” he said, even though he didn’t really.

* * *

“Don’t be angry,” Graves murmured to Cat’s neck.

Julian had been walking by, looking for a bathroom. When they’d rejoined the party an hour or so earlier, Cat in a visibly better mood, he’d conceded to have another drink, and then another one. Olympia was drunk but upright, Reid was drunk and silly, Skit was drunk and exuberant, Em was sober and solemnly watchful. Graves had opened his arms to Cat and she had gone to him, and now they’d been missing for several minutes after slipping conspicuously away.

“I’m not angry,” Cat said, and added drily, “I couldn’t be mad about everyone who wants you, Graves. I’d have no hours left in the day.”

Julian, who probably (definitely) should have known better than to eavesdrop, held his breath, listening to the rustling sounds of intimacy from the other side of the half-open door. He could hear it, fingers in fabric, hands on skin. He closed his eyes and watched it, his imaginings of it, in flashes.

“It’s only you, Catastrophe Archman. Always. It’s always been you for me.”

“Even when it isn’t?”

“Especially then.”

Julian caught the telling sound of Cat’s inhale; the gasp that meant Graves was touching her somewhere he’d touched her many times before. Somewhere he knew she liked, by the sounds of it, because he knew the intricacies of her, and she of him. Graves groaned softly and Julian’s stomach flipped, heart pounding. 

Silence.

A bead of sweat dripped down the back of Julian’s neck.

Then, sharply, Cat moaned. 

“ _Graves_ —”

Julian snapped out of his voyeuristic haze and kept walking, taking the hall to the stairs, then half-sprinting up them. He could feel the bang-clash of his pulse in his throat and fumbled for his key, pushing the door open and stopping at the sound of something.

The strumming of an acoustic guitar.

He paused at the sight of the open window, realizing he’d never actually thought to wonder where it went. Presumably nowhere, but he could see now that outside there was a slight drop. A few feet down, a structurally unsound pseudo-balcony sat below the ledge of the window, and Calamity Archman was currently stretched out on a flattened portion of the roof.

“ _Let me introduce you to the featherweight queen. She’s got Hollywood eyes, but you can’t shoot what she’s seen. Her mama was a dancer, and that’s all that she knew, ‘cause when you live in the desert, it’s what pretty girls do_.”

Julian adjusted himself on the other side of the open window to sit partly in the frame.

“ _I’m throwing caution, what’s it gonna be? Tonight the winds of change are blowing wild and free. If I don’t get out, out of this town, I just might be the one who finally burns it down._ ”

Lam’s voice was softer, no longer the dig it had been at Graves. Now he was singing only to himself—or rather, if Julian’s guess was accurate, to Sam. This was closer to prayer than performance, and though it was possibly more intimate than the moment he’d just fled, Julian settled in to listen, entranced by the sound.

“ _Never had a diamond on the sole of her shoes, just blacktop white trash straight out of the news. Doesn’t like birthdays, they remind her of why she can go straight from zero to the Fourth of July—_ ”

Lam broke off, choking, and Julian closed his eyes, breathing out.

“ _I’m throwing caution, what’s it gonna be_?” Julian sang along softly, his voice mixing with Lam’s. “ _Tonight the winds of change are blowing wild and free_.”

She was easy to find tonight. Maybe because he was drunk, or maybe because he was singing a song about her. That felt right to him. She did love attention, and the air was filled with her within seconds, faster even than when he sang her own songs.

“ _If I don’t get out, out of this town_ ,” Julian sang, holding a hand out for hers, “ _I just might be the one who finally burns it down_.”

She smiled at him. No, she was laughing at him. He felt sure of it. Somewhere on the other side of the veil between life and death she was tickled pink at the thought of her brother drunk off his face, half-horny and half-morose. Any second now she was going to open her mouth, tell him to stop lusting after everyone he set eyes on, something like that. He waited for her to roll her eyes and tell him he needed to get laid and quit whining, but instead her gaze slid from his to something over his shoulder, behind him in the frame.

“ _Cause it’s some kind of sin_ ,” Lam whispered, “ _to live your whole life on a might’ve been_.”

Julian turned in time to see a glimmer on Lam’s eyelashes, wetness clinging to them like rain. He was staring at Sam, staring and staring like he would never get his fill, and then he turned slowly, mechanically to Julian.

“Don’t sing my fucking songs,” rasped Lam, staggering back to his spot on the roof.

Julian said nothing, and Sam was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly can't tell you how grateful I am that you guys have been so encouraging. Things have been hard lately, not gonna lie, so I can't thank you enough for your support. FYI, I'm planning to switch off between this and my other WIP for now. Thanks for reading! Songs were slightly less recognizable than last chapter: "The Man," "Bones," and "Caution."


	3. Sit There in Your Heartache

After the party, Graves Nero sank into his fourth night of ceaseless dreaming. Time, which was nearly always disrupted for him, had become a fractured tribulation of nostalgia in his dreams; a wonderland of foregone miseries. He kept seeing her again, Sam, in her fraying tank tops and her too-short shorts, her summer tan lines that never really faded. 

“Oh,” she said. “So you think you’re the man, huh?”

All the lines were crossed, his visions blurred. She went from long hair to short and back again, from coat-bundled and closed-off to helpless gulps of sun-soaked laughter, a summer shandy in her hand. She’d say her first words and then, in a blink, she’d say her last.

“I think I’ll go for a swim this morning,” she said. “Are you coming?”

In his dreams he was unable to answer. He was himself in the dreams, the version of himself who had already lost her, but the memories still played out like a one-sided recording, simulations for which his participation did not count. No matter how many times he gave a different answer—no matter how many times he tried to take her hand and beg her don’t do this, not today, Jesus Christ Samara please listen to me for once in your goddamn life and _don’t do this today_ —it didn’t matter. She played out like a hologram of herself.

“What kind of name is Graves, anyway?”

Calamity had given it to him. Because of Lam, it didn’t matter what Graves’ name had been before, or who he had been or what or how. Just a small town boy, born to run in a dead man’s town. The Archman twins, they were Graves Nero’s origin story. The only parts of it that mattered had come after them, and then there was Sam. 

“I’ll never touch you,” she said drunkenly, mascara raccoon-streaked across the lids of her liquid eyes. “I never would, and you want to know why? Because I know where that story goes, I know how it ends, I know what you want and I’ll never give it to you. I’m tired of being nothing,” she said, and then she threw her bottle against the wall. “I’M SICK TO DEATH OF BEING NOTHING!” she screamed at him, really screamed, and then she sobbed, blood streaking down the side of her hand to seep into the folds of her skin, salty.

Then his vision would blur, delivering him somewhere else, somewhere new.

“Aren’t you so cool,” she said derisively, sounding bored. She glanced at him, scalding, while she took a drag from his joint. “Bet you roll your own just for the aesthetic of it, don’t you?” She exhaled, half-laughing at a joke he hadn’t made, and then she looked at him again, playing on even though in this version, in his dreams, he’d said nothing. “You don’t impress me, Graves Nero. You don’t do anything for me. And you certainly don’t know me.”

 _I_ am _you_ , he didn’t say.

Blur. 

“Stop, stop, we can’t.” She inhaled violently, like he’d robbed her. “We can’t. We can’t, if Cat found out—”

Blur.

“God, look at you. Just look at you.” Her fingers trailed the bones of his cheeks. “You’re pathetic,” she whispered, her voice beleaguered and devout. “You’re even worse than me, aren’t you? Poor thing.”

Blur.

“Don’t you say his name to me. Don’t you fucking dare, get it out of your mouth.” _Please, Sam_ , he tried to say but couldn’t. _Please, this time it’ll be different. I’ll make a different choice, I swear, I’ll do everything differently._ “If you don’t get it out of there, I will,” she said, and reached for him, prying his jaw open and then, with a hysterical shriek of a laugh, biting hard on his lip, sinking her nails into his skin. “You and I, we don’t deserve him. We don’t deserve him.” He lost himself in that kiss every time. “You and I, Graves Nero or whoever you are, we don’t deserve anything but pain.”

Blur.

“Of course I don’t want to be friends.” It had shocked him, that answer. The extent of her loathing had been painfully extreme. “Don’t look at me like that, okay? It’s not that I don’t like you, honestly. I just don’t get you, Graves. I’m just… really not interested in whatever you’re pretending to be, and anyway, you’re my best friend’s boyfriend. There’s literally no reason we should be friends.” She turned to look at him, hair long and patience thin. “I never want to be your friend,” she said.

Blur. 

“Choose? Easy. Him. Her. Both of them. I choose both of them over you. No, you know what I choose? Me, you stupid son of a bitch, because I don’t— no. Shut up. Shut up, stop, you don’t love me, and I don’t— I _don’t_.” A sob in his mouth, which had no citrus-pink, electric-hot taste now, not anymore. No synesthesia left in dreams. “Listen to me. Listen to me. This isn’t love. You’d better hope it’s not love. You’d better take it back, you know why?” Salt. _No, don’t tell me, please don’t tell me again—_ “You know what I do to the people I love?” she whispered. “I leave.”

Blur.

“Yeah, cool, no thanks.” She turned away and he went back to his room, feverishly scribbling _taking its toll that I’m leaving without you_ into the margin of a page. Later, he would change the tiniest word, _that_ to _and_. As if he’d actually made the decision, or ever had a choice. _And I’m leaving without you_.

Blur.

“I like this. It’s quiet. Peaceful.” A glance at him. “Thank you.”

Blur.

“This was a mistake.”

Blur.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Blur.

“Don’t make me say it.”

Blur.

“Look, I told you. It’s over. It’s done,” she said dully, shading her eyes from the sun. Then she glanced at him, surveying him for something she wouldn’t find before rising sharply to her feet. 

“I think I’ll go for a swim this morning,” she said. “Are you coming?”

Graves’ eyes snapped open.

Sun was starting to come in from the window, through curtains that hadn’t been drawn; he’d overslept, assuming he’d actually slept at all. His neck ached and he sat up slowly, glancing down at the body beside him just as he heard a sharp rap at the door.

He froze, then exhaled. Better to ignore it.

“Graves, I know you’re there. Open up.”

That was less easy to ignore. Graves pulled his shirt over his head and padded softly to the door, opening it a crack.

“She’s sleeping,” he said.

Skit Ransom gave him a pursed look of irritation. “It’s you I wanted to catch. Before you had a chance to snuck out,” she added with a disapproving once-over.

“How did you know I was here to begin with?” he asked, rubbing his temples. His head throbbed a little, and his eyes stung. Dehydration, or misery. Or both.

“Saw you.” Skit’s jaw was set with accusation, though he didn’t answer. “Seriously, Graves? If Cat found out—”

“Skit, come on,” he sighed. “Nothing happened.”

“I think you being here is already a little more than nothing,” Skit muttered.

“You know she hasn’t been sleeping,” he reminded her, annoyed now himself. “She had tremors three times and based on what she kept asking me for, I think she’s been taking—”

“She isn’t your responsibility,” Skit cut in, loud enough to be overheard. Thankfully she seemed to recognize this wasn’t the place for this conversation, and glanced over her shoulder before shoving him. “Get in before someone sees you.”

She bullied her way past him and Graves glanced down at his bare feet, feeling oddly vulnerable as he shut the door. Skit, meanwhile, inspected the room, looking over Olympia’s shallowly breathing form.

“I get that you’re worried about her,” Skit said, turning grudgingly to him. “She’s putting up a front, but it has cracks. Which I think all of us— _including_ Cat,” she warned, “have managed to sort out after last night.” She paused, and then added, tight-lipped, “But it’s still not your job to fix this.”

 _I can’t sleep,_ Olympia had mumbled to him, stumbling sideways into his chest while he helped her up the stairs. _I can’t do it, I can’t sleep without her—_

As it turned out, neither could he. “So whose job is it, then?”

“Literally anyone else’s,” snapped Skit. “Don’t you get that? Stay out of it, Graves,” she said. “Just stay out of it.”

“She asked for me,” Graves said, clearing his throat. “She asked for my help, so—”

“Yeah? Then fuck you for saying yes.” Skit gave him another irritated glance, which she hadn’t been giving him much of these days. She’d been mostly avoiding eye contact altogether. “What did you tell Cat?”

“She went to her room early.”

“Oh yeah?”

He bristled. “She was tired, Skit. She asked to be alone.”

“So you thought ‘oh, okay, I’ll just sleep with Olympia then,’ or…?”

“Jesus, I told you nothing happened—”

“This time?” Skit prompted.

Graves said nothing.

Skit kicked off her shoes with a sigh, sliding into the bed beside Olympia. She reached out, brushing a strand of pale pink hair from Olympia’s parted lips.

“I didn’t do anything,” Graves said helplessly.

“Mm,” Skit said without looking up. “Of course not. You never do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Skit glanced up, pausing with her fingers in Olympia’s hair. “Exactly how many people are you going to break before you stop acting like your hands are clean, Graves?” she asked him, as if she knew anything. As if she knew anything at all.

People didn’t think much of Skit Ransom because she had the attention span of a mosquito. She was harmless, playful, never any particular threat. With Sam gone, though, Skit’s grief had shifted to fill the role of unwanted candor; the voice of reason masquerading to liven up the unnecessarily cruel. It was one thing when Sam had done it, because she _was_ a little cruel. She was mean and selfish, temperamental and vain, loyal to no one in the end. _I’m tired of being nothing_. 

Skit had no right to wear Sam Kinney’s skin.

Graves plucked his shoes from the ground and slipped gruffly from the room, pausing for a second in frustration on the other side of the door. 

_Why are you looking at me like that?_

_Graves…_

_Graves!_

He opened his eyes sharply. 

Speaking of old skins. Even awake the dreams hadn’t fully receded, and there was nothing for it, nowhere to go, nothing to displace the tension coiling up between the notches in his spine. Every time he tried to move forward there was a lurch, a hook around his neck. There were only two places left: the now, which was suffocating, and the then, which was overflowing, lawless, rapidly escaping what little containment he possessed.

Graves took the stairs slowly at first, carefully, and then quickened until he reached the landing. He headed for the door and paused only once before shoving the side of his fist into it. 

“Lam.”

Silence.

“Calamity. I need to talk to you.”

The dreams had to stop. There was a lid somewhere, and he had to find it. It wasn’t his fault, had never been his fault, couldn’t have been. He knew what was real and what wasn’t. He knew who he was, who he wasn’t. 

What he’d done. What he hadn’t.

Silence.

Graves slammed twice with the flat of his hand. “Lam, open the fucking door.” He paused for half a second, then slammed again. “Lam!”

 _You know, you’re not what I imagined_ , Sam said, her eyes closed. _Your flaws are so common. It’s cheap, honestly._

What was?

_This. You. Us._

She didn’t mean that.

 _Of course I mean it. I told you, I’m tired of being nothing. If I’m going to be split open for something, for_ someone _, it’ll be for more than this—_

“We both know this is your fault,” Graves snarled, suddenly exhausted by all of it; by the years, the months, the days, the masks he wore and the versions he had been. “We both know what you said to her, we both know what you _fucking did_ —”

The door opened so suddenly he nearly tumbled inside, faltering when he caught himself.

“Lam’s not here,” said Julian Kinney.

His hair was tousled from sleep, the imprint of his pillow marked into the side of his face. His eyes, bloodshot though they were, were the same size and shape as Sam’s, but that wasn’t what Graves had recognized, or failed to recognize. It was something else, maybe the blood in Julian Kinney’s veins, maybe his view of the world, maybe the words he said or the way he said them. Maybe it was the fact that she had loved him.

_You know what I do to the people I love? I leave._

_But I’ll never leave you, Graves Nero, because I don’t love you at all._

“Sorry,” Graves mumbled, suddenly feeling sick.

Then he tore off the way he’d come, a blurred Samara Kinney kaleidoscoping into the past that Graves Nero would do anything to outrun.

* * *

Julian doubted Olympia remembered what she’d said to him on the night of the party—neither that she’d accidentally revealed how his sister had been in touch with their mother before her death, nor that she resented Julian’s lack of similarities to Sam—but she must have sensed that some kind of altercation had passed between them. As a result of something he presumed to be guilt, Olympia spent most of the weekend dragging Julian around: to breakfast, to lunch, out for a little jaunt to the college town the conservatory shared with a more conventional university nearby. Reid often joined them, along with Skit, while Em was there less frequently, and Cat expressed her intent to join them only once. She said she was meeting Graves at the little bagel place that served as a BYOB watering hole after hours.

“Oh good!” said Olympia. “Great. Good! Excellent. A night out would do Julian some good,” she added, purposefully not mentioning either Graves or her drunken show from the previous night. “This will be perfect!”

Julian, who was already making a point not to comment on anything having to do with Graves, opted not to press her on the issue, nor to force conversation on the evening of. Instead, he spent the first hour watching Olympia neatly rearrange the Coronitas bottles in an ice bucket she kept in her room for these types of occasions. Visually the whole thing was quaint, damn near adorable. Olympia, with her lace dresses and pink hair, had a talent for making everything inconceivably cute, and despite having plenty of other things to ponder, Julian wondered how his sister had felt about that. Sam was not what he would call precious, but perhaps she didn’t mind it when it was someone close to her.

“Everything okay?” he said to Olympia, startling her as she began nestling the bottles for the fifth or so time. She seemed to have forgotten he was there.

“Hm? Oh, yes. Do you want another?” she asked, plucking one of the bottles from her little bouquet of beers, and for a moment Julian couldn’t help wondering what sort of person bent over backwards like that to please someone she clearly didn’t even like.

“I’m fine. I’m having a good time,” he assured her, though his attention wandered frequently to Cat, who was laughing across the room with Graves’ lips pressed to the base of her throat. Graves was giving her his _you like me_ look and Cat was looking at him back like _I love you_ , and altogether it was too much, wildly distracting. There was a glare around them both, glossy and impenetrable; a little bubble too far above anyone else’s reach to burst. 

That Graves was the same person who’d shown up rambling incoherently in his bedroom door was something Julian had yet to reconcile. He could feel his observations tightening, coming closer to the center of the storm. _We both know what you said to her, we both know what you fucking did—_

Julian had opened his eyes that morning in time to see Lam Archman tossing books into his bag before disappearing through the door. Julian had begun to wonder whether Lam was just very good at timing his entrances and exits rather than actually disappearing into thin air, and it appeared he’d been right. Julian rose to his feet and stood beside Lam’s bed, noting the imprint there. The sheets were still warm.

They hadn’t spoken since Julian had made Sam appear, though he was becoming increasingly interested in making an attempt. The song Lam had sung to himself about a girl who wanted to burn down her desert town could have only been one person, and coupled with Graves’ alarmingly early appearance in the doorframe, the intrigue was at a relative high. Julian wanted to pose the question to Olympia, though he wasn’t sure what to ask. Not that she’d been restrictive with information in the past, but “What exactly happened there?” seemed excessively broad to ask of anyone.

“Hey,” Julian said quietly to Olympia, attempting to sound measured. “About Lam,” he began, and then hesitated when she stiffened. “Is he… always so… you know?” he attempted, losing his nerve partway through the sentence.

“Oh, god yes, absolutely. He’s always been like that, with very few notable exceptions. What Sam ever saw in him I can’t begin t-” She stopped, clearing her throat. “You know what? Let’s not spoil the evening by talking about it,” she assured him, and then conveniently became very chatty about something with Skit, leaving Julian to glance at Reid.

“Having fun yet?” asked Reid, sparing Julian a tiny smirk.

“Something like that,” Julian said.

Monday arrived without ceremony or answers. Julian, running late, dressed quickly and headed down for breakfast, grabbing a cup of coffee and making his way to his first class. 

The unfortunate thing about the way Julian’s schedule had turned out was his double dose of Professor Iver, who seemed to dislike him even more than Professor Archman. At this point, Archman concerned himself only with the students who were working towards their end-of-year showcase. Not much had been expressed to Julian about what awaited Dives students in their fourth year at the conservatory, but it was clear given Archman’s evaluations that not everyone progressed so far.

Which was not to say that Archman was especially cruel with his critiques; his expectations were high, his commentary was a bit off-beat, and he had a keen sense for when a student was or wasn’t at their best (i.e., hungover or unprepared), but he didn’t deliver his criticism unreasonably. He was, however, singularly focused. Olympia had called Professor Archman “eccentric” and he most certainly was, particularly in his remarkable ability to forget there were other students in the room. Given that Julian wasn’t slated to be critiqued until later in the term, he may well have disappeared into thin air.

Iver, on the other hand, was a different story. He was both the theory professor and the ensemble advisor, and for whatever reason, he seemed to believe that Julian had sinister reasons for advancing to a third-year curriculum in his first term. The less Julian tried to agitate him—speaking to nobody and aiming to camouflage against the walls, much the same way he did in Archman’s basement—the more Iver seemed aggravated, like he suspected Julian’s silence of being secretly weaponized. 

“Kinney,” Iver snapped at some point, catching Julian’s attention as it wandered out the window to the campus greenery. “I don’t suppose you have anything to contribute?”

“I suppose not,” replied Julian, prompting snickers from elsewhere in the classroom. 

Iver did not take this well.

“Well, then perhaps you already know everything required of you,” Iver said, folding his arms over his chest and looking, in Julian’s mind, rather petulant. Perhaps it was because Iver put in such a conscious effort to look older that Julian had begun to quietly catalogue the youth in him, evidence of what another version of Julian would have taken for weakness: the fair-haired, slight-postured glimpses of privilege; the virtuosic frailty of a prodigy. Privately, Julian was noting the many ways that—had this been happening on his turf rather than Iver’s—the conversation would go very differently. 

“Why don’t you perform something for the class, Mr. Kinney?” prompted Iver. “Since the rest of us seem to be boring you.”

“I was advised… not to,” said Julian. By then, a few of the theory first years were openly gaping at him. The majority of them were still wide-eyed and eager to please, carefully protective of the fragile belief that they knew anything at all.

Iver’s mouth tightened. “Perhaps in my classroom, you might consider indulging me,” he said.

A very Destiny school of thought, that authority was dependent on geography. _My house, my rules_ , she said frequently to a young Sam, who would have been secretly scribbling on the walls, filling the back of their joint closet with Crayola murals, or sauntering out of the house in a crop top that suggested she only wanted one thing, or lying (not very well) about having completed her pre-show vocal warm-ups. 

Destiny’s rules were ultimately very easy to predict and understand, however difficult Sam found them to follow. Actually, her rules were mostly based around Sam: if Sam wanted something, then Destiny probably had a rule. And seeing that Destiny would not have responded well to logic, such as “I was told not to accidentally conjure any ghosts in the event that I might traumatize students who are unprepared for that kind of traumatic bullshit,” Julian assumed Iver was no different. He rose to his feet, sliding Sam’s journal—not the _For Julian_ book, which he kept hidden beside his bed—from the top of the desk. One song in particular had been nagging at him since the previous week, so he flipped open to the page and held it up, hesitating for only a second.

Iver gave him a look like he wasn’t going to do it, which was something Julian was very accustomed to. Sam had always loved it when someone gave Julian that look, her eyes lighting up and her grin twisting wickedly. “Now you’ve done it,” she’d tell them, delighted, and even after Julian was doubled over the toilet from whatever he’d taken or after he’d started bleeding thanks to whoever he shouldn’t have punched, she’d still look at him like that. Satisfied, like she’d temporarily inhabited his bones, and therefore pulled off an impossible trick.

Julian glanced down at the page and fought the urge to pick at his too-long thumbnail.

“ _You sit there in your heartache, waiting on some beautiful boy to, to save you from your old ways. You play forgiveness, watch it now, here he comes—_ ” 

He nearly released a sigh of relief when the specter that rose before him was Sam. Thank god there were no orphans in the classroom. 

“ _He doesn't look a thing like Jesus but he talks like a gentlemen, like you imagined when you were young—_ ”

The little hologram of Sam turned to where Professor Iver stood in the back corner of the room, her lips parting while Julian sang.

“ _Can we climb this mountain? I don't know,_ ” Julian continued, feeling a little thrill at the knowledge that Sam seemed to become slightly more corporeal each time. Would she actually manage to speak this time? He shivered and sang, “ _Higher now than ever before, I know we can make it if we take it slow… Let's take it easy, easy now, watch it go—_ ”

But Sam didn’t speak, not really, though her hand dropped and so did her gaze. Her fingers floated slowly, skating the edge of her thigh, the flutter of fabric from the hem of her blue sundress. The tips of her fingernails followed a dance-like arc, floating performatively upwards.

“ _We're burning down the highway skyline on the back of a hurricane that started turning when you were young_ ,” Julian sang, recognizing something in his sister’s face that he hadn’t seen in two years, nine months, six days. “ _And sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live when you were young—_ ”

Iver began walking around the perimeter of the room. Sam’s gaze followed him.

“ _T_ _hey say the devil's water, it ain't so sweet. You don't have to drink right now, but you can dip your feet every once in a little while_ ,” Julian sang, watching Iver’s gaze quicken around the room, looking for something. A reaction? An exit? He set his jaw and settled on Julian’s left, hovering with a palpable stiffness.

“ _You sit there in your heartache, waiting on some beautiful boy to, to save you from your old ways. You play forgiveness, watch it now, here he comes—_ ”

Sam looked at Julian and he felt something rush back to him. Another memory of her, this time eleven or twelve, Julian tagging along while she darted through the crowd, trusting him to catch up but not waiting for him to follow. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing,” she said, slipping through the brassy doors of the hotel elevator and hitting the suite number with the feral confidence he would never again see on anyone else. Julian remembered that moment, and the moment spent looking up at the mirrored ceiling after. He remembered watching himself stare back and understanding that this was what he was all along. 

He was Sam’s.

“ _He doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but more than you'll ever know_ ,” Julian finished, trailing off as Sam gave a small flutter of her fingers; the cheeky little _see you next time_ that had been her personal specialty. 

“You never want to leave on a goodbye,” Sam had said once, giving ‘pageant lessons’ to some guy in her underwear from where she stood on the grimy countertop of the bar. At the time, Julian’s head had lolled nearby, bobbing with the effort of staying awake. “Nobody likes goodbye,” he remembered Sam saying. “They want a little hope, just a little, and the more unlikely the better, because it means it’ll really be something if they ever get to see you again.” Later Sam led that guy to the bathroom while Julian dutifully turned his head away.

“That,” Iver announced to the rest of the class, startling Julian, “is an example of spectral conjuring. Does anyone recall the basic principles of conjuring?”

A hand raised tentatively from the front row. “Certain chord progressions can produce a… mirage?”

“Yes,” said Iver, “precisely.”

No, Julian thought, you’re lying, only he couldn’t figure out why Iver would lie except to downplay Julian’s abilities, and in that case, it didn’t seem worth arguing. What did he care what Iver thought?

He returned to his seat and faced forward, careful not to let his attention wander out the window again. After class he rose to his feet in relief, tossing his things into his bag and hurrying to the door just as Iver called after him.

“Just a moment, Mr. Kinney.”

The other students murmured to each other as Julian braced himself and doubled back, retreating to where Iver leaned against his desk. 

“You didn’t write that song,” said Iver.

It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Julian agreed.

Iver inspected him for several long seconds.

“Well. Far be it from me to determine why you’ve been placed in an ensemble with students so far beyond your level,” Iver said.

Julian waited for that sentence to resolve itself into a _but_.

It didn’t.

“Bring in an original song,” Iver said, turning his attention to something much more interesting than Julian. “You can perform it for the other members in your ensemble during our next meeting.”

Julian’s stomach lurched. “You want me to write a song by… Wednesday?” 

“Under any other circumstances, a student in their third year at Dives would have an expansive oeuvre to perform by now,” Iver said without looking up. “I should hope you have some legitimate reason for your attendance here aside from the death of your sister, do you not?”

Numbly, Julian wanted to argue. He had poems, yes, sort of, but since he’d set foot on campus they’d begun to feel like fragments from other lifetimes, old bones. He hadn’t written a word since he’d arrived.

But there were people to push and Iver wasn’t one of them. Sam would have, probably, but Iver’s assignment wasn’t completely unreasonable, nor was his explanation. His motivation may have been suspect, but there was no resolving that right now. 

“Okay,” said Julian. “I’ll write something, then.”

Iver didn’t look up and Julian wandered out of the classroom, resigned.

* * *

He could have asked Olympia for help, or Reid. Both were very likely to assist him. Em was of course out of the question; Skit probably would have been an affable source of encouragement, provided she could sit still long enough. Ultimately, though, there was only one person for whom he’d been hunting around for precisely an excuse of this urgency.

Julian slid into the desk beside Cat’s, leaning towards her. “Can I get your help with something?” he murmured to her.

She wore her platinum hair in a loose braid down her back, a sliver of moonlight. It slid, fluidly, to the side when she looked at him.

“Something interesting, I hope,” she said in an undertone, flashing him half a smile.

“I need to write something,” he explained. “For Iver.”

She kept her eyes carefully on Errata, who was beginning the day’s lecture about fragile progressions. “Oh?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know where to start.”

She nodded, then slid him another glance, scribbling something distractedly in her notes. “Meet me later?” she suggested. “My room’s on the third floor.”

His pulse quickened.

“Right, sure,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yeah, okay. After class?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, cool.” 

She turned her attention fully to her notes while he hesitated a beat, fixed on the prospect of being alone in a space with her.

In _her_ space. With _her_.

To say Julian’s thoughts had begun to vulgarize when it came to Cat Archman was unfortunately an understatement. Not that he expected anything to happen between them, but there was a sensuality to her, literally. His senses were alarmingly heightened when it came to her details, to the point where he could pick out her perfume in the room, her precise laundry detergent. The exact shade of what seemed to be her favorite black tank top, which was faded from the wash. He saw the outlines of her tattoos in mid-air, in particles of dust. The sparrow on her hands, the moon beside her eye, the dripping jewels beside her hairline. Ever since he’d heard her with Graves, Julian had become suspended in her presence, half-awake. He was beginning to crave closeness with her like a drug. 

_Was it her or what she represented?_ asked his more sensible inner self, but before he could answer, his inner Sam would laugh and laugh. “It doesn’t always have to mean something, Jules,” she’d tell him. “Most things mean nothing at all.”

If pressed Julian was innocent, or so he believed. Truly, in even his wildest, most extreme hallucinations nothing would happen between him and Cat— _Catastrophe_ —her name itself was enough to distract him—because truthfully, where would it go? Even with Graves, whom she obviously liked best, she wasn’t exactly the sunny, hand-holdy, happily-ever-after, ride off into the sunset type of person. She was alluringly persnickety, often in a mood and breathlessly foreign, mystifying and lovely. At best, Julian could only be her ball of yarn.

“Oh, hey,” she said, looking up when he knocked on her open door frame. “Come in.”

She had a tiny single room that was pristinely, dazzlingly white. The gallery wall of art prints and photographs (all equally artsy) were in matte white frames; the sheets, the curtains, all white like a snow queen’s lair. Her shelves were sparse, her bed was uncomplicated but made, and her window, unlike his, had a spectacular, sweeping view of campus. Everything was airy and ordered and she slid over on the bed, gesturing him inside with a small tilt of her head. Her ponytail, now high on her head, swung towards him like a noose. 

Julian stepped inside without closing the door. 

(Innocent. If pressed.) 

“How was the rest of your afternoon?” he asked her.

“Oh, you know. Robotic.” She gave him a smile he hadn’t learned yet. “But I dug something up for you,” she said, sliding a manila file folder towards him. “This is a song from our first year ensemble,” she explained as he reached for it, tentatively plucking it from the bed.

He didn’t recognize the handwriting, though his attention strayed immediately to his sister’s name.

 _RUNAWAYS_ _  
__Written by: Cat Archman, Lam Archman, Sam Kinney, Graves Nero_

“You all wrote this together?” he asked, thumbing through the composition. He was unsure where to start, what to read first, whether to try to hum it to himself or to consume it like Braille beneath his fingers. It seemed like such an enticing thing to receive that he didn’t want to rush—but still, he wanted immediately to know the ending. 

“Well, I’m sure it’s not a secret by now that we used to play nicely together,” Cat said wryly.

Julian blinked and glanced up, surprised to hear her speak so flippantly about a subject that no one so far had been willing to address. 

“What happened?” he asked, glancing up and wondering if she, unlike Olympia, might actually tell him everything; if she might lean close and spill her secrets in his ear. 

But no, too easy. 

“Eh, what always happens,” Cat said with a shrug. “People grow apart, that’s all.”

“Even people who shared a womb?” Julian asked, referencing her name where it sat beside her brother’s on the page.

“Oh, Lam and I aren’t exactly the secret language, always-knows-what-the-other-is-feeling kinds of twins. I mean, we were _closer_ ,” she admitted. “But it’s always been kind of push and pull with us.”

Abruptly, Julian recalled that _she looks like Lam_ had been Cat’s first thought upon seeing the ghost of her mother. 

“Anyway,” Cat said, interrupting Julian before he could find somewhere to file that in his sparse collection of Catastrophe Archman’s inner truths, “I figured a more narrative type of song might be a good place to start, if you hadn’t seen that before. Sam’s style was a very wistful, homegrown Americana mythos—you know, Jack and Diane, taking the midnight train going anywhere, that sort of thing.” 

It occurred to Julian that Cat didn’t know Sam had already given him all of her songs; Sam must not have told anyone what she’d done with them, and so far, no one had asked. Before he could do much with that thought, though, Cat kept talking.

“This song is very much a story. Not an implied story, but a full one, with plot.” She reached for the file to reference something and Julian sat beside her carefully. “See, right from the beginning? _Blonde hair blowin' in the summer wind, a blue-eyed girl playing in the sand. I'd been on a trail for a little while, but that was the night that she broke down and held my hand_ —”

Cat’s voice was a clear soprano, just on the right side of melancholy. Sweetly on the edge of overripe. 

“I mean, the entire concept of runaways was totally Sam,” Cat interrupted herself with a laugh, though Julian wished she hadn’t. “Lam and I had never run from anything, and neither had Graves, really,” she remarked with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We all had such different styles, and in the end the song was…”

She trailed off, staring down at the page like she could use it to see into the past.

“ _I knew it when I met you, I’m not gonna let you run away_ ,” she sang to herself, her voice strained. “ _I knew that when I held you, I wasn’t letting go_.”

Cat forced a swallow, then turned her head away, forcing the page back into Julian’s hand. 

“It’s actually kind of melodramatic, to tell you the truth,” she said, clearing her throat. “I mean it’s basically about a guy who can’t get his shit together even after his wife has his baby, and blah blah. They never actually run away, which is kind of the point. Things get harder with time. It’s like, truly disillusioned,” she finished with a laugh. “More so than we had any right to be, and more than we initially intended, but I think we got carried away trying to write something meaningful. Meaningful, capital M. Significant, capital S.”

She drummed her fingers on the mattress. “Sam was the energy behind it,” she murmured, lost now to her recollections. “I remember being so awed by her, by how sure she was about everything. _And_ by how good it felt to spend time with someone who didn’t actually know everything about me and my family, you know? For Sam, we were all equally rebellious, equally free. For her, we were all runaways.”

Cat gave him a distracted smile and turned away while Julian’s eyes slid over the pages.

 _We got engaged on a Friday night_ _  
__I swore on the head of our unborn child that I could take care of the three of us_ _  
__But I got the tendency to slip when the nights get wild_ _  
__It's in my blood_ _  
__She says she might just run away somewhere else, some place good_ _  
__We can't wait 'til tomorrow_ _  
__You gotta know that this is real, baby why you wanna fight it?_ _  
__It's the one thing you can choose_  
 _Let's take a chance baby, we can't lose_ _  
And we're all just runaways_

Julian pictured Sam in her first term at Dives, meeting for the first time all the people who would soon become her world. He saw her writing those words freely, with no one over her shoulder to pull her back, to tell her no. _Let’s take a chance baby, we can’t lose_ , he heard her say, crooking a finger and laughing, her hair maybe still long. The thought of it made him ache, throbbing with counterfeit joy. 

Maybe she hadn’t called him after she’d written it because, for the first time, she hadn’t thought of him at all that day; because he belonged to an unhappy chapter, and she had no room for that now. 

_We’re all just runaways._ It implied a past, but also a future. It was lonely, but not alone.

“Do you mind if we try again tomorrow?” Cat suddenly asked him, her voice muffled in the palm of her hand. Julian blinked, having temporarily placed her in the periphery of his thoughts. “I just, um. I just remembered I have another assignment for Welch, so—”

“Yeah, no of course.” Julian rose to his feet, tucking the file under his arm. “Thank you, really. I appreciate it. This already helps a lot,” he added, referencing the composition.

Cat’s response was brisk, distant. “No problem. Can you shut the door on your way out? Thanks.”

She’d turned away from him, curling around herself, and he hesitated to go. He wanted to leave her in a better state than he’d found her, but he doubted he’d know what to say.

“Okay,” he said, and slid from the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

* * *

Julian had lied to her, of course, because possessing a song written by four competent songwriters was actually no help to him at all, and he didn’t have much time left to write one. He tried working in his room before finding the four walls stifling; the possibility that his roommate might come home at any moment was certainly no help. The library was no better, occupied as it was by students with far too much curiosity for him to allow his mind the freedom to wander. Ultimately Julian grabbed the sheet music for _Runaways_ and an empty notebook, throwing himself on the ground near the edge of campus just as the sun began to go down.

The heat wave had died off a little over the two weeks he’d been there, though the humidity was still unavoidable. The evenings were so similar to the days, leaving Julian with the sensation that time strung itself into one drawn out wave, plateauing in lethargy. Or possibly that was just his own emptiness, reflected in the blankness of his page. He hadn’t even picked up a book in months; hadn’t written a word of his own for what felt like longer. 

He kept returning to _Runaways_ , and to everything his sister had brought to life. Sam had written something, created something, because she had _done_ something. This, however, had merely _happened_ to him. He had acquiesced, plodding along when given the option. Did he now envy her? Resent her? Minutes ticked by and no, not that, never that. In fact, he felt a tepid little brightness for her, a new certainty, because if she had been happy, then maybe he had misunderstood somehow.

But then again… 

_I don’t know Jules, I can’t explain it, I just have a weird feeling about things and honestly I might not be here much longer—_

He shook himself. Now was not the time to concern himself with the mystery Sam had left him, unless there was a story there, maybe? If not a story, then surely something of worth. Fear? Panic? The pressing sensation of emotional claustrophobia?

His blank page suggested not.

“Fuck,” said Julian aloud.

“That bad, huh?” asked a voice behind him, and Julian jumped, hissing out a string of expletives when he turned.

“Seriously?”

“Sorry,” said Graves, not remotely apologetic as he approached. His hair, usually pulled back from his face, had tumbled around his shoulders, thick and slightly matted at the ends but curly—loose, wild curls. “You’re starting to be very predictable, you know,” Graves added, looking over Julian’s shoulder before dropping to the ground beside him, legs stretching out in the grass. “Working on something?”

“Trying to.” Julian attempted to conceal _Runaways_ behind his notebook, but Graves caught the motion, brows knitting briefly as he reached for it.

“How’d you wind up with that?”

“I was just… Cat gave it to me,” Julian said evasively, allowing Graves to take it from him.

“Blast from the past,” he commented, flipping through the pages. “Why did you want it?”

“Well, it’s more that I wanted help,” said Julian, shifting in his seat. Graves looked up at him with an air of expectation and Julian fumbled in discomfort, unsure how to address his encounter(s) with Cat or Graves’ appearance at his door two days prior. “I just… I have to write a song for Iver,” Julian explained. “But I’ve never written one before, just poems, and those I’ve definitely never written on command. So now I’m, like—” He grimaced. “I’m completely fucking blocked, basically.”

“Nah, that’s not real,” said Graves, turning his attention back to the song’s pages. Julian opened his mouth to remark how that was all well and good for _him_ to say, given that he seemed to be some sort of musical wunderkind, but before he could, Graves had added, “You’re good for Cat, you know. You soothe her.”

“What?” 

“She’s just all in her head sometimes. And you’re not blocked,” he said again, handing the pages back to Julian. “What do you want to write about?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be blocked,” grumbled Julian, though he wanted to keep talking about Cat. He was about to ask more questions; something like _what do you mean she’s in her head?_ or, if that was too suspicious, then _yeah, totally, and by the way how long have you guys been together and when Olympia says you’re on and off what does that mean, exactly...?_

“Not for this song specifically,” Graves said. “Just… in general, what do you want to write about? I assume your poems all have something in common.”

“Oh. Uh.” Julian considered it. “I mean, they were never meant for other people. It was always just about, you know.” He shifted awkwardly. “Telling the truth, I guess.”

“Whose truth?”

“What?”

“Whose truth?” Graves repeated, which did not help.

“Uh. Well, I don’t—”

“We’re all trying to say something true.” Graves leaned back on his elbows. “That’s the fucking point, right? Emotional catharsis. Looking reality in the face and understanding it, understanding the experience. A song is good when it opens you, frees you.” He gave Julian a half-squint of consideration. “When it gives you something back.”

Oh good, very helpful. He’d been so short on existential crises up to that point. “Like what?”

Graves shrugged. “Like the words you never had before to describe the things you’ve always felt.”

“And what if I don’t know what I feel?” Julian muttered.

Graves turned his head to look at him, green eyes too-bright with something very, very close to disdain.

“It’s our job to know what we feel,” he said. “To figure it out, at least. That’s the gift, man,” he added, “because anyone can figure out a fucking chord progression. Anyone can learn the rules and use them. Harmonies are just math equations, it’s all just fucking formulas. Music and songs aren’t the same.”

“So you’re saying it’s a lost cause,” Julian summarized at a mutter, torn between playful self-deprecation and actual, paralyzing doubt.

“Maybe it is,” Graves agreed, which stung him a little. “If that’s really your truth, then yes, I guess it is a lost cause.”

Graves closed his eyes and Julian wanted very badly to insist he was wrong, that of course there was more to him than that, but he wasn’t actually convinced. That was the problem, wasn’t it? That quietly Julian suspected this wasn’t the place for him, because it had clearly been the place for Sam, and there had never been any two people more different. He and his sister were night and day. He was a shadow of her, a crevice at best—no, not even that. Being her shadow would still have been something more than what he was.

“I’m tired of being nothing,” Julian said, and one of Graves’ eyes opened. “I’m tired of _feeling_ nothing,” Julian clarified, restless and self-conscious but still hoping, idiotically, to be somehow understood. “I’m sick of being… _forgotten_ by everyone. It’s like… it’s like I don’t even take up space on my own, and I thought—” He stopped. “I thought that when Sam left that maybe I’d grow, somehow, expand to fill her absence, and I did, but I didn’t. Not really.”

Graves’ tone was clinical, therapeutic. “Didn’t you?”

“Well, I completely lost it, if that’s what you mean,” said Julian with a sharp laugh. “I thought I was the one keeping her sane, but then it turned out no, it was the opposite. It was me who couldn’t do shit without her. I mean, look what happened to us after she left,” he said, gesturing around to Sam’s domain. “She came here. She made friends, she made a life, she made… _art_. And I—”

He broke off, sickened.

A charitable breeze slid by, dispassionate.

“What was it like?” Graves asked. A small mercy, not forcing Julian to finish that sentence.

“What was what like? The accident?” To Graves’ silence, Julian shrugged. “It was like any fucking high. Too much all at once and then over, useless. Spent.”

“No, not that. I meant the place you went.” Graves turned his head. “Was it a hospital?”

“No. Well, yeah. Basically.” Julian fidgeted and Graves became very still in contrast.

“Was it like… you know. Pills? Doctors? The walking dead?”

“No. Well—” Julian swallowed. “It was really… quiet.”

Graves gave him a look like _Go on_ , and grudgingly, he did.

“I woke up in the ambulance feeling like I’d been underwater,” he said slowly. “It was kind of like… like floating to the surface, I guess. I knew how I’d gotten there and everything but I couldn’t feel it anymore, the thing that made me do all that shit. Stealing the car and taking off in it. And I thought I’d shake the feeling, you know, get the water out of my ears or whatever but I heard the court stuff through a fog, everything the lawyer said and all that. It was just kind of a dull roar. But it’s not like anyone treated me badly or… I don’t know.”

He fidgeted, picking at his thumbnail again.

“It wasn’t so bad,” he finished, and Graves laughed hollowly.

“Oh, it wasn’t?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Julian said, a little defensive. 

“Okay, and do all the parts of you agree with that assessment?” Graves countered skeptically.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on.” Graves slid a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes. “You had a sister and a mother who were both fundamentally selfish and you’re gonna tell me that didn’t do some shit to your processing systems? Come on,” he said again. “You came here for a reason. You wanted something. It was bad.”

Julian’s cheeks heated, his knuckles tight. “It wasn’t _bad_ —”

“Okay, then what was it?”

“It just… it just wasn’t happening to me,” Julian blurted without thinking. “It… never felt like me, somehow. I remember playing with the words in my head—mania, especially. Like, think about that—mania, the actual, _for-real_ Latin root means ‘madness.’ _Maniac_. Like, what?” he said nonsensically, and Graves shrugged. “What is that supposed to do to you, you know what I mean? Finding out the body you’ve always lived in has actually belonged to a _maniac_ this whole time? It’s like being sliced open on the table while someone else is operating on something you can’t see. No, not that,” he corrected himself. “It’s like floating above yourself while that happens. Like being anesthetized to everything, totally without sensation, and then suddenly realizing you _are_ a fucking maniac because feeling this—feeling _nothing_ —it’s completely alien to you. It’s normal, they tell you. This is what normal is. But it’s just the absence of any ups and downs, so then you realize that what actually feels like home to you is the madness, and therein lies the fuckery. It’s all in your mind,” Julian finished, out of breath by the time he choked it back down.

He anticipated a lull of awkward silence. Instead, though, Graves was nodding.

“There it is,” murmured Graves in agreement. “Therein lies the fuckery.” He chuckled, in on some wordless joke with the universe. “It’s all in your mind,” he confirmed, and turned to look at Julian as if everything Julian had just said had somehow made perfect sense.

Absurdly, Julian felt the sudden urge to kiss Graves Nero full on the mouth. It was a wild idea, a manic one, absent any meaning, any direction, any tone. Just sparks of a concept, half-formed, legless, a burst of it between his teeth, beneath his skin. It was a sudden, indefinable need to press his lips to someone else’s, and specifically to _this_ someone—who didn’t look a thing like Jesus, he realized, recalling Sam’s words and understanding them for the first time. Understanding what it was to find salvation, for better or worse, in the hands of someone who wasn’t prepared to be a savior of any kind.

What had Sam imagined for herself when she was young? Someone who would take her away from everything, probably, almost certainly. She would have resented thinking herself a damsel but she was one, absolutely. She was in constant need of rescuing, and who had done that for her? Was it Lam?

Was it Graves?

_I knew it when I met you, I’m not gonna let you run away—_

Julian closed his eyes, hearing Sam’s words in Cat’s sweet voice.

_I knew that when I held you, I wasn’t letting go—_

“There’s a song there,” said Graves. 

Julian startled back to consciousness. “What?”

“There’s a song there,” Graves repeated. “You know, a story.”

“A story, or a song?”

“Every song is a story.” 

“And you think I’m supposed to write _mine_?” Julian asked, repulsed.

“Of course.” Graves slid a glance to Julian. “Aren’t you tired of living in someone else’s story all the time?”

“Are you?” he countered, perhaps resentfully.

“Honestly, I’ve been stuck in this one for so long that I’ve forgotten how I looked before it,” Graves said.

“Oh.” Julian hadn’t really expected an answer, and certainly not one of that magnitude, which felt… heavy. Too heavy to be given to him with such little care, or to be received without proficiency or deference. “I… kinda don’t know what to say to that.”

Graves shrugged, undeterred. “Well, it’s the truest thing I’ve said in a long time,” he said. “So don’t make me walk it back.”

“Right,” Julian said. “Yeah, okay.”

There was a certain undeniable impact to the things Graves Nero said. Something unsteadying without being contemptuous, which ironically had a crippling effect. Julian had expected denial or demurral and instead he had this, and it didn’t feel like nothing. 

He was starting to understand what Graves had meant about being unopened, set free by something. By the idea that Julian’s feelings, his fears, they finally had words; a name, or at least a reason. This was what it was to give something back.

Not that he knew what to give in return. 

“This song,” Julian said, abruptly remembering the pages in his hand. “It’s really good.”

Graves smiled faintly. “You think so?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your favorite line?”

“The ones Sam wrote,” Julian said loyally.

“Right, right, but which ones?”

“The chorus. You know, the whole…. I knew it when I met you, I’m not gonna let you run away _—_ ” 

“Ah. Really? Huh.” Graves stiffened for a moment. “Did Cat tell you that? I think she must have misremembered.”

It was only at that moment that Julian realized Cat had never specified who had written what. He’d assumed, and now he leapt to conceal his error. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Graves said. “Sam didn’t write that. I did.”

“Oh.” The words reshaped themselves in his head, belonging to Graves now. The same desperation and longing mixed with nearness, closeness to change, lonely but not alone—only now it was Graves’ longing, Graves’ promise of a future, and the certainty that Julian had been carrying around with him since that afternoon deflated slowly, thinly, bleeding out in a meager, shallow decline. 

“So what did Sam write?” he managed to ask. 

“The bits about regret,” Graves said. “Haunting the house like a ghost. Recognizing it but not feeling at home.” _At night I come home after they go to sleep, like a stumbling ghost I haunt these halls. There's a picture of us on our wedding day, I recognize the girl but I can't settle in these walls._

Graves gave Julian a quizzical look. “Why did you think Sam wrote the chorus?”

Julian’s visions of Sam contentedly writing warped, dissolving, and with them went the bang-throb of his heart.

“I just assumed somebody happy wrote it,” he said, finally putting words to his disappointment.

“Oh.” Graves looked distantly amused. “Well, I suppose I was at the time.”

“Happy?”

“Yes. Or something I thought was happiness.”

“You thought?” 

“Yeah, or like… I don’t know. More like being in the right place at the right time.”

“Cosmic synchronicity?”

“Yeah, sure.” 

“Is that why the chorus and the verses don’t have shit to do with each other?” Julian muttered, looking over the song again. 

Graves’ smile broadened. “Oh, so now it’s not a good song anymore, huh? One week in and you’re on me for narrative consistency, nice—”

“The chorus is promising a life to someone else, but it’s just a lie, isn’t it?” Julian protested. “The verses, they’re fucked up.” _Melodrama_ , Cat’s voice reminded him.

“Yeah, well, Lam wrote the one about looking at the stars and confessing dreams,” Graves commented wryly, as if that were funny somehow. _We used to look at the stars and confess our dreams, hold each other to the morning light. We used to laugh, now we only fight—Baby, are you lonesome now?_

“Should that mean something to me? Stars and dreams aren’t invalid,” said Julian, largely because he wanted Graves to keep talking. 

Instead, though, Graves looked at Julian in a way that seemed distant, or restless. “You’re kinda new age-y, huh?”

“New age-y?” Please. “I’m from Vegas.”

“You’re from the desert. That’s kinda spiritual, right?”

“It’s not exactly Joshua Tree,” Julian said, registering in muted disappointment that Graves was pulling away, and that he could do nothing to bring him back.

“Alright, fine, whatever. Look, the point is every word, every note, it’s a philosophy,” Graves said, proving him right. The conversation was coming to an end, though he wasn’t sure why. “A good story makes a good writer.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

Graves shrugged. “Stories come from stories. You know, from experience. You have some, clearly,” he said with a glance. “Everything you need, it’s there.”

 _We both know what you said to her,_ Graves’ voice shouted on the other side of his door. _We both know what you fucking did!_

So another night would pass without answers, and Julian still didn’t have a song. “Where?” he grumbled, and Graves stretched to his feet, laughing into nothing.

“It’s all in your mind,” he said, turning back the way he’d come.


	4. It Ain't So Bad

A lot of people wanted to know what Em Wilder’s “real” name was or what the circumstances of Em’s birth had been—whether Em was “originally” a boy or a girl tended to be the primary source of interest—and though it rarely came from a place of poor intentions, the curiosity of others did not register for Em as any pressing concern. Em had gone long enough suffering the stress of being forced into a box they did not care to be in; eventually, perhaps out of general exhaustion, they figured other people could very well fuck right off and sit with their discomfort. Answers were a privilege, and Em’s answer was that there was no answer. If that made other people uneasy, that was no longer Em’s cross to bear.

“If you think about it,” Sam Kinney had said the first night she’d gotten Em roaring drunk, “people should be more okay with being uncomfortable. I mean, if billionaires are allowed to not give a shit about poor people and racists don’t have to worry about getting shot by cops, then who cares if it bothers them what your goddamn pronouns are? Let them sit with it,” she said, a little gleam of wickedness on her face. “Let them fucking _stew_ in it. They’re not the ones who’ll ever have to hurt. That, baby,” she added with a smacking kiss to Em’s forehead. “That’s you.”

Em never asked Sam how she knew that, about Em hurting. Presumably she could have guessed it, seeing as Em was from rural Minnesota, where the only thing more toxic than ubiquitous homogeneity was the constant threat of ostracization. People typically don’t notice how strange normalcy was until they were cursed to abnormality—the men who love men and women who love women, or even the women who love men but get divorced or enjoy sex, or the men who only look like men and the women who simply aren’t, or the ones whose skin isn’t the color of “skin-colored” lingerie at all—but because they were the minority opinion, nobody was ever willing to ask them. 

It had long been Em’s opinion that their mother, still attractive at the usually invisible age of forty-five, was tyrannically oppressed. Dawn Wilde was the mother of five children, of which Em was smack in the middle at number three, and had never spent a day without vigilant oversight of her caloric intake. Dawn was a full-time employee and a full-time mother as well, plus the lead volunteer at their local parish. She was a doting wife and a caring daughter-in-law who regularly offered deference to everyone around her, always visibly joyous, always generous, always serving others first. Dawn called this absurd social conformity “being a good Christian,” but Em felt strongly otherwise. What were Christian values, after all? It wasn’t generosity _only to some folk_ , or compassion _only for those who look and sound like you_. What Dawn actually was, in Em’s mind, was a smart girl who’d been bullied into marriage at eighteen and saddled with more babies in a row than her exhausted soul could properly nurture. But because Dawn had managed the unreasonable expectations thrust upon her, she resented anyone who had not done the same. 

“I just want you to be happy,” was one of Dawn’s favorite sayings. “How can I know you’re happy if you’re choosing to make things so much harder on yourself?”

In Em’s opinion, Dawn’s life wasn’t just hard, it was impossible. Where was the happy ending in tending to a man’s inability to put away his own laundry? What was beautiful about having so many children you couldn’t even remember what each one thought? Where was the justice in being the person to work all day in the kitchen and then step back, inviting your husband and father and brothers-in-law to have their fill first? It was one thing to be unselfish, or to prioritize your family. It was another thing entirely to be so goddamn asleep at the wheel you didn’t notice your entire life was a giant fucking sham. 

“Why do you do that?” Em asked Dawn once. 

“Do what?”

“You always ask Dad to confirm things for you.”

(Dawn had been animatedly telling a story, interrupting herself every few seconds to turn to John and say “right?” or “you remember, don’t you?”)

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Dawn. “I just don’t want to misremember.”

“Why would you misremember?”

“I don’t know. Did you finish your veggies?”

“Why would Dad know better?” After all, Em had heard Dawn and her friends joke about a million times while preparing their various post-service Sunday brunch spreads that their husbands would be lost without them. In Em’s opinion, they were right.

“I’m not saying he would,” Dawn said absently, adding, “Can you hand me that plate, hon?”

“I just don’t get it,” Em said. “Aren’t you smarter than he is?”

Dawn chuckled. “Sure, baby. You make sure to tell him that, okay? He forgets.”

“No, I’m serious,” Em insisted. “You pay the bills. You do the chores. You cook, you clean, you keep food in the house—”

“Your daddy works hard all day,” said Dawn simply.

“Harder than you?” 

At that point Dawn sighed and turned to Em, sweeping her blonde highlights back from her face with the dry side of her rubber kitchen gloves. 

“Look, baby. Sometimes you just gotta do things to keep the peace,” Dawn said, a conversation-ending statement, and though she never said what those "things" were, she had another baby shortly after—Justine had screamed her lungs out for the first three years of her life and then somehow become the pretty one, the sweet one and everybody’s favorite—and Em had an idea that whatever transaction Dawn had to make to keep the peace, Em wanted no part in it at all.

Not that Em couldn't appreciate the recreation of it, later. Gender was obviously tied to sex, all of which came down to an identity people assumed was ambiguous all the way around. Not so. Em felt neither male nor female, true, and was not exclusively attracted to one binary over another, but this did not make Em indifferent towards sex by any means. This was something Sam Kinney had _also_ understood without Em saying a word.

“Oh my god, you _love_ her,” said Sam, teasingly, having caught Em’s attention drifting during one of their riotous nights out. (Em had glanced over to where Catastrophe Archman’s skirt was pulled up, the tattoo needle drilling apathetically into the pristinity of space below her jutting hip. Sam, eagle-eyed as she was, had followed Em's unsubtle line of sight.) “Wait a minute, no. You _want_ her,” Sam corrected herself in a hysterical whisper, her eyes widening in disbelief and awe. “You dirty slut! You’re picturing it right now, aren’t you?”

Yes, absolutely, though of course Em would never clarify anything so vulgar. Of the things that were impossible to escape from Em’s upbringing, Dawn’s gentility when it came to manners and the general state of communal self-hatred and shame were high on the list, so Sam’s openness when it came to sex was never not jarring. 

“I’m not _picturing_ it,” Em hissed, which was a lie, and a shameless one as well. In Em’s mind, Cat was very much enjoying what Em was doing to her, which was utterly, divinely filthy and therefore never to be spoken aloud. Possibly even prayed over, albeit to a God that Em had never been fully convinced was on their side. 

“Oh, shut up, you know I won’t tell,” said Sam gleefully. “Though I’m obviously insulted I’m not the object of your affections.”

“Who said anything about affections?” scoffed Em, because truthfully, as pressing as the desire to bite down on Cat Archman’s thigh might have been in the moment, there was only one person for whom Em stayed awake at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering how best to say the words _you’re it for me, and I am surer of that than all of my uncertainties in life._

Em Wilder (the ‘r’ added to Wilde as a bit of Sam-flavored rebellion) had met Olympia Stax the way everyone at Dives met everyone else. In class, or on the grassy knoll in the center of the quad, or in one of the dining halls, or wandering the perimeter of a party. Em had been doing the latter, silently observing the scene like a disgruntled zoologist when Sam had zeroed in on them, dragging Em into the group of then-random strangers who would later become an inseparable group of friends.

“This is Calamity, Catastrophe, Graves, Reid, Olympia, and—”

“We already know each other,” muttered Skit, who was still Priscilla at the time, though not for very much longer. This was days before Skit and Em would engage in a full-scale war that would ultimately lead to Reid as a replacement roommate, though Em would commit very little else of this time to memory because of… _her_.

Olympia Stax, femme icon—who was not yet pink-haired or nose-ringed but who was already mixing her Victorian aesthetic with patent leather menswear—was beautifully, breathtakingly distracting. But here was the more relevant truth about Em that other people overlooked in favor of the whole non-binary thing:

Em was not a nice person.

Em was actually extremely grumpy, just in general. Em was also neither a morning person nor a night person, preferring to sleep all the time rather than choosing to align with any particular state of waking. Em liked to be alone and did not appreciate being tasked with keeping a conversation moving. In Em’s opinion, the inside of their own head was more interesting than the things other people stupidly decided to say out loud. Em did not have patience; not at all. It was a virtue, fine, but Em did not care about being virtuous—which Dawn Wilde was, and look how little it had served her. Even before Em was a bad Christian, Em had already been a bad _person_ , selfish and ambitious and not particularly nice to their siblings and also condescending and angry and cold. Dawn once told Em that a person was only truly beautiful if their soul was beautiful, with the obvious implication being that Em was not. 

But none of that had ever mattered to Em until they met Olympia.

For the record, the closest person Em could come to calling a kindred spirit was probably one of the Archman twins, either Cat or Lam, who were both so moodily intemperate they might as well have both been indoor cats. Cat hid it better, being a girl and also visibly her father’s least favorite child and therefore worthy of sympathy, but Lam was gloriously foul-mouthed and almost always ranting. Em and Lam did not get along and there was no fuss about it, no reassurances that one or the other was still a “good person” or that they should try to be friends. Em usually tapped into sexual fantasies of Lam when they needed something angry. A little light choking, perhaps. 

But Olympia was not like the Archmans, nor even like Sam. Sam’s goodness couldn’t be doubted—though Sam’s actual _morals_ were about as well-defined as Em’s sexuality—but Olympia was something else, something soft and fragile and bright. Olympia thought Lam was brilliant, she thought Cat was talented, she thought Graves was sensitive and misunderstood and that Sam was practically saintly. She thought Reid was objectively hilarious and that Skit’s energy was something to envy, or to aspire to, rather than what it actually was, which was a fucking nightmare to live alongside. Olympia planned outings for them, she spoke to them individually, as humans. She got to know them and she loved them unquestionably, in a way that only truly kind people could love. She overlooked their flaws, and not the way good Christians overlooked flaws, which was to say “bless their hearts” or “they know not what they do” or something of that nature. Olympia looked at each of their flaws as if the flaw itself was a work of art; a necessary pigment in the vividness of what they were.

This was not easy for Em, who felt most comfortable in a place of tolerable loathing. It was easy to endure the annoying, the irritating but unthreatening, like a tag sticking out or a sliver of something just beneath the skin. Em was rude without meaning to be, and did not know how to tell Olympia that the volume of her wonderful was so high that Em spent all their time trying to fit the smallest whisper of reciprocation in edgewise. After a certain point it became pointless, and Em’s resentment for how Olympia made them feel started to fester, becoming resentment for Olympia herself. The difficulty in loving someone was the very, very fine line of hating them, and for Em, that was a much more convenient side to land.

After all, what was love? Em’s mother loved their father. What use was that to anyone? Knowing a thing was true didn’t have to make it worth acting on. Better to just live and let live.

Up to a point.

“You don’t have to do this,” Olympia had slurred when Em dragged her away from the first party of the year. She’d just finished drunkenly singing that song that was so obviously about Graves, her longing so painfully deliberate that Em was willing to cast aside the annoyance of having to care for someone else just to drag her away from her own mess. 

“You’re going to piss off Cat,” Em said, which was worth noting as a troubling outcome on its own. They’d all been strange versions of themselves since Sam’s death, but none more so than Cat. Em associated it with the appearance of Sam’s brother Julian—who might have been a perfectly fine person, but Em’s quota of tolerance for other people was well beyond full. “Did it not occur to you that maybe you weren’t entirely subtle?”

“Shut up,” mumbled Olympia, scrubbing misery from her cheek. “It’s not about Graves.”

A more patient person might have allowed that sort of delusion to stand. “Of course it is,” Em scoffed.

“How would you know?”

“Because I have eyes, Olympia. And ears. And I was there that day.” An old memory glittered painfully in Em’s mind; the day at the beach, and the tiny droplet of water that fell from Graves’ hair onto the valley of Olympia’s stomach, the dip beside her hips. It was nothing, wholly unintentional, only Em had seen the way Olympia’s breath had caught in her throat, her lovely eyes suddenly hollow with wanting.

“I don’t,” Olympia whispered ambiguously, and it was so achingly false that Em sighed, resolving—as they so rarely did—to be helpful for once in their useless life.

“Head or heart?” Em asked, prematurely pissed off, and Olympia blinked.

“What?”

“I can only fix one. Head or heart?”

She stared at Em blankly, or guiltily.

“Em, I don’t underst-”

“Answer the question.”

“But I don’t know what y-”

“Olympia.”

She closed her eyes with a sigh, shuddering out an answer.

“Heart,” she said, cheeks tinged with shame.

Figures, Em thought, ignoring the repulsive wave of despair that meant they’d been right. Night terrors, sleeplessness, intoxication and subsequent hangover (Olympia’s _real_ problems) were somehow more bearable than the pure unrequitedness of her feelings for someone who would never love her back.

As if Em didn’t know exactly how it felt to live with that every day.

“Fine. Don’t move.” Em shifted, placing their hand squarely at the center of Olympia’s breastbone, uncontroversial, and then inching the heel of their hand over in tiny, hairline fractures of space until the calluses of their palm sat securely over the thrum of her pulse. 

“Em,” said Olympia with tepid softness, which Em ignored, closing their eyes.

It wasn’t like the degree of magic they produced at Dives was any more tiring for Em than it was for anyone else. It wasn’t… the _sweat_ of it, exactly. It wasn’t not, but the more pressing concern was the idea of other people knowing. That was the trouble with having something good and pure in your possession that made other people believe they deserved some claim to it, like if it was given by God then it was given to be shared, even though He might have just as easily given it to a recalcitrant, impatient person for a _reason_ —for Em’s uncooperative discernment alone. It was Em’s prerogative to refuse. Ironically, though, maybe that was Em’s reason for loving Olympia, because no one else could know what it meant for others to believe their gift was owed. Because Olympia had so much goodness to spare, she gave and she gave and she gave with nothing in return and it drained her, emptied her out. It would be the same if anyone knew what Em could do. 

But Olympia Stax wasn’t anyone. Not to Em. And the benefit of having chosen her heart instead of her perilously addled head was at least that she wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning.

It was a simple, almost retro melodic line, few words. Few were necessary. “ _Racy days, help me through the hopeless haze but my, oh my,_ ” Em sang. “ _Tragic eyes I can’t even recognize myself behind_.”

Olympia’s own eyes were wide and exquisite, awed and terrified.

“ _So if the answer is no_ ,” Em managed, looking furtively away, at the little divots of her clavicle, the delicate nestling at the hollow of her throat. “ _Can I change your mind_?”

“Em,” Olympia said again, her voice different this time, but Em pressed on, focusing headily on the feel of Olympia’s rushing blood beneath their palm.

“ _Out again, a siren screams at half-past ten and you won’t let go, while I ignore that we’ve both felt like this before. It starts to show_ ,” Em sang with a swallow, knowing Olympia would feel it by now, the uncanny numbing at first that was followed by the settling in of some unnatural but tranquil solvent; a plaster of serenity to smooth into the cracks. “ _So if I have a chance, would you let me know_?”

Olympia breathed out, and in, with contemplative ease.

“ _Why aren’t you shaking? Step back in time graciously taken_ —” A swallow. “ _Oh, you’re too kind_ ,” Em confessed, and Olympia may have been good, she may have been drunk—she may have been unnaturally kind and in love with someone else—but she wasn’t stupid. It was like she was seeing Em for the first time, a question mark dimpling her brow. Not that Em was brave enough to look her in the eye and answer. 

Not that Em didn’t _try_ , directing the question to the shapes of their knuckles where their hand lay still, pensive and trembling where it lay above Olympia Stax’s beautiful heart. “ _We’re all the same and love is blind. The sun is gone before it shines, and I said if the answer is no, can I change your mind_?” Em pleaded with the universe softly.

The pain would be gone by now. But what would take its place? Em couldn’t stand to see falseness or worse, pity. Sympathy. 

“ _If the answer is no_ ,” Em finished, finally looking up, “ _can I change your mind_?”

Em was not a nice person. Em was, in fact, a dick. An absolute asshole. The secret they kept most tightly locked was not their gender or their uninhibited wanting but the fact that they could do this, remove another human being’s pain, but they wouldn’t do it for free. Of course there was some kind of tragic backstory to it—of course there had been Dawn saying Em was God’s miracle and therefore _beholden_ to work themselves into fits of seizures and fevers from effort—of course it had nearly cost Em everything the one time it could not save the only person Em had truly believed deserving of saving—but what did it matter? The point was Em had always been capable of curing anyone of almost, almost everything, and they had never told a soul. 

Except one. “It’s okay,” Sam had told Em with a gentleness they both knew Sam hated to possess. “Don’t blame yourself.”

But of course Em blamed themselves, because maybe if Em had learned to be less of an asshole instead of selfishly taking more than they gave, then Sam Kinney wouldn’t be dead. Maybe if Em had been more like Olympia, they could have shared everything. Night terrors, a love affair, a living friend.

“Em, you’re crying,” whispered Olympia, wiping a tear away with her thumb. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Fuck. Em yanked away, backstepping so fast they nearly tripped, but Olympia’s hand tightened around their wrist, holding steady. Her grip was so shockingly dauntless that Em ricocheted, returning like a magnet to the pulse in Olympia’s chest.

“Come here,” said Olympia, but Em was already there.

Their lips joined more than they met. Tenderly, surely, hungrily. Em would later remember thinking they would probably die in that kiss—not willingly or anything. More like sinking inadvertently into quicksand. They would never be found again, buried alive by the surprising carnality of Olympia Stax’s tongue. She tasted like acidity, the acrid bitterness of someone Em could never have, the infracting, temporary sweetness of Eden. Olympia tasted like sadness and sweat and Em wanted nothing more than to kiss her, to keep kissing her, until time had the decency to stop.

And then the kiss ended for all the reasons kisses usually end. Because one person was drunk and the other was sober. Because a noise meant that someone else was about to walk in. Because the possibility of life continuing and their friends entering turned Olympia’s cheeks that frothy, pretty pink that only meant regret. Because the last person Em would ever want to know about the private longings of their sad little life was the enormity of Graves Nero—and it was him, of course it was, who came to check that Olympia was okay. Because some things, like the secrets of Em Wilder’s heart, were only meant to be forgotten, slept away like a swiftly fading dream.

Em had been with Skit when Graves slipped up the stairs with Olympia. “Don’t get involved,” Em warned, because Skit was always getting involved. It was her most annoying habit aside from all her other annoying habits. (Skit was impossible to live with and only marginally less difficult to live without.) 

Em would gradually speak to Olympia less and less after that night, pulling ambiguously away. Not because Olympia didn’t have a right to do whatever she wanted, but because Em didn’t want to see the confirmation. Em didn’t want the comfort of knowing they had temporarily cured Olympia’s pain only for her to tear open a new bleeding seam. What was the point? What was the point of any of it?

Olympia wouldn’t notice, anyway. Em had always been an asshole, and if Olympia had mistakenly believed otherwise, that was on her to finally learn. The pain of losing what little of her Em had possessed to begin with would eventually ebb, like everything. 

Of the guilt that remained from that night, only one thing would stick to Em’s side like a thorn.

“You and I both know it was Graves,” Skit had said, temper flaring. Her temper was what initially endeared her to Em, who appreciated a good personal shortcoming even if Skit’s anger was so unfailingly misplaced. “I don’t care what Olympia heard or what anyone saw, I don’t care what Lam thinks he did.” Her mouth tightened. “Sam would be alive right now if not for Graves.”

In response, Em said nothing. There was nothing to say, and no point spilling secrets now.

* * *

Julian woke late to find he’d fallen asleep in a tumble of discarded sheet music, a sticky pool of dribble now drying unappetizingly beside his mouth. He sat up, squinting through the bassline of his latest dehydration headache, and peered around for the closest thing to a finished draft that he’d managed overnight to create. He had class with Iver in minutes; his stomach growled and his bladder ached and still, his first thought was fuck, my notes.

He spotted the page on his desk, not because it was where it should have been (i.e., directly beneath his head) but because an unfamiliar hand had scrawled something onto the page.

There was, in Julian’s handwriting, the meager existence of half a first verse:

 _It started with a low light_ _  
_ _Next thing I knew, they ripped me from my bed_ _  
_ _And then they took my blood type_ _  
_ _It left a strange impression in my head_

Then the other handwriting began inserting itself.

 _You know that I was hoping_ _  
__That I_ _would_ _could leave this_ ~~ _colorless_~~ _star-crossed_ _world behind_ _  
_~~_They cut my chest wide open_~~ _But when they cut me open_ _  
_~~_But then they changed their minds_~~ _I guess I changed my mind_

 _Don’t be so fucking whiny_ , the note said, and below that, _Needs a plot besides whining, maybe a pre-chorus_ , along with two suggested lines:

 _That was the turning point_ _  
_ _That was a lonely night_

Not that there were many other people it could have been, but an unrelated verse suddenly popped into Julian’s head.

 _We used to look at the stars and confess our dreams_ _  
_ _Hold each other to the morning light_  
_We used to laugh, now we only fight_ _  
Baby are you lonesome now?_

“Lam wrote the one about looking at the stars and confessing dreams,” Graves commented derisively in Julian’s memory, and Julian looked up at the opposite bed with a start, expecting to find Calamity Archman staring at him.

But of course he was already gone, despite the fact that Julian couldn’t even begin to guess what time Lam must have come in the night before. Certainly after two in the morning, maybe even three. What was he possibly doing from day to day that their lives never intersected outside of class? Aside from taking Julian’s lyrics and cobbling them like the shoemaker’s elves, that is. 

Julian scraped a hand against his mouth, saliva still crusted there until he scrubbed at it with his sleeve. He desperately needed to shower.

A glance at his phone corrected him: no, he needed to go. Like, now.

Fuck.

Julian stumbled to his feet and shoved the page into his bag, grabbing the t-shirt on the floor that must have fallen from his chair and tripping over a pile of composition books, sending them sprawling across the attic’s hardwood floor. He dove for the door handle and propelled himself into the corridor, stubbing his toe whilst his stomach wrenched in protest. What a terrible day for Olympia to not be overinvested in ensuring his presence at breakfast.

He was late enough that there was no one to collide with on the stairs, though he did find himself stumbling bleary-eyed onto the brightness of the grassy knoll while he attempted to finagle the opening of his shirt over his head. The back of it had gotten knotted somehow when he pulled it on, twisted and stuck somewhere he couldn’t quite reach while the remainder of it obscured his vision, and therefore his progress.

“Whoa,” said a familiar voice, one hand pausing him with a brush of fingertips to his still-bare abdomen. “Get dressed in the dark this morning or something?”

“What?” asked Julian, registering with panic that it was Catastrophe Archman’s platinum hair materializing from the glaze of high morning sun as he finally freed himself from the shirt’s twisted neckline.

“This is Lam’s shirt,” said Cat with a laugh. 

Julian looked down, managing to pull the fabric taut enough to read the message _fuck you fuck this fuck me_ in block letters. “Maybe I have one of these too,” he said, and then, remembering that he had not brushed his teeth, he instinctively covered his mouth when she gave him a look of skepticism.

“Sure,” she offered musingly.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “I’m just—”

“Iver?” she guessed, one brow arched. She was shading her eyes from the sun, one hand on the corner of her bare hip. He retroactively registered the feel of her touch on his stomach, remixing it now for the benefit of his own private suffering. 

“Yeah.” He couldn’t help a grimace.

“Go, then.” She smiled. “You figure out a good song?”

“Nope,” he said.

“Oh, come on. I’m sure it’s great.”

“It honestly isn’t,” he promised her.

She laughed. “Sam was the same way,” she assured him, then tucked a gleaming lock of platinum hair behind one ear. The tiny tattooed jewels along her hairline winked at him, curving with her little smirk. “Have fun.”

“Cat, I literally do not have a song,” he said, or possibly pleaded.

“Yeah, yeah. See you in class.” She turned and walked toward her father’s classroom, hips sashaying, and Julian waited until she was safely out of range before swearing quietly under his breath, booking it across the quad to reach the Highlands.

* * *

“Mr. Kinney,” said Iver, not looking up at his entry. “You’re late.”

“Sorry,” Julian managed. He had taken the stairs at a run, which even without the humidity would have been a mistake. The more sweat wept from every orifice, the more, ironically, Julian could detect the heightening smell of Calamity Archman, which at the moment happened to be a mix of marijuana and a warm, almost caramelized trapping of smoke, wafting like spilled whisky over amber cologne. “Overslept.”

He willed Iver to not look up—he had at least managed to turn Lam’s shirt inside out to avoid anyone registering the message across the front—but the thin fabric was worn nearly transparent, and there was no doubt about Iver’s attention drifting over his choice of outfit. 

“So it appears,” said Iver drily, who at least seemed to be aware that Julian would not have done any of this on purpose had he possessed one iota of choice or forethought. “I hope you have something to show for it.”

Fuckety balls, Julian thought for the fortieth time, not that he hadn’t known perfectly well this was coming. There was essentially no chance Iver was going to let him off the hook.

“I have something,” Julian said, clearing his throat uncertainly. “But it’s not good. Or finished.”

The rest of the class stared at him as Iver leaned against his desk, scrutinizing Julian from afar. “Why not?”

“Why isn’t it good,” Julian asked, flustered, “or why isn’t it finished?”

“Whichever you’d prefer to answer.” Iver, by contrast, looked oddly calm.

“I suspect it’s not good because I’m not very good,” Julian said, to which someone unsuccessfully covered a laugh. “And it’s not finished for… approximately the same reason.”

“I see,” said Iver.

The rest of the class was now openly whispering about him, the traitors. Julian longed to kick something.

“Well,” said Iver, rising to his feet. “Would more time solve the problem?”

“Probably not,” Julian said, hardly believing his luck, “but it would help.”

“Fine. I’m not unreasonable,” Iver said with a shrug. “See what you can get done by our next meeting. No point wasting any more of the class’s time,” he added, and drew their attention to the whiteboard. “Now, who can tell me about dissonance?”

Julian silently tightened a fist, registering too late that Iver’s goal had always been to humiliate him in front of the other first year bards in the most public way possible. It didn’t matter whether he produced a song or not. What mattered was that the rest of the class—and therefore the rest of the world, for all Iver seemed to care—recognized that Julian was talentless and fraudulent and not mysterious at all, except for his lack of talent. He could see the way Iver’s shoulders were now smugly buoyed, the swagger in his step as he proceeded to call on every student with a sense that only _they_ were his true pupils while Julian, failure that he was, was the usurper who had been found wanting and would soon be overthrown. 

One thing was painfully clear. He’d definitely have to finish the fucking song and make it good, which of course he didn’t know how to do. All he’d gleaned from his night with Graves—which, mystifying as it was, was still the most helpful thing aside from Lam literally doing his homework for him—was the line “ _it’s all in your mind_.”

Yes. Clearly that’s precisely where it was. Now how to get it from his mind to somewhere physically outside it. During their lunch hour Julian sat with Em, the only person he could find, in an abject silence that was almost soothing, rapping his pen quietly against the table in an attempt to coax something out of his brain. 

“Stop that,” said Em, who was carefully masticating a bite of pasta salad.

“Sorry.” Julian put the pen away, his knee jiggling aimlessly beneath the table until Em finally looked up with an expression of absolute loathing.

“What’s your problem?”

“What?” 

“Sort it out,” Em said sourly, and Julian sighed.

“I can’t. I don’t… I’m blocked,” he managed, wanting very badly to lie down somewhere until the pressing sense of inadequacy had passed.

Em looked at him for a long time before saying, “That’s not real.”

“Okay, but like… it is, though,” said Julian hysterically.

“So unblock it. Do something different.” Em looked down at their watch, then picked up Julian’s half-eaten sandwich and dumped it in the nearest bin. “Class. Get up,” he said, ignoring Julian’s protests of continued hunger, and eventually left him behind during the ten seconds Julian spent hastily fumbling for his pages.

To say that Julian was in something of a dark mood by the time the afternoon rolled around was a bit of an understatement. His dire need to compose something—literally anything—meant he’d forgotten temporarily what he was wearing (the effect of his smell with Lam's was, by then, less smoky backroom and more slightly stale human pheromones) until the moment he walked into Archman’s classroom in the chapel basement. 

He paused when he noticed the others weren’t in their usual seats. In fact, nobody was sitting. Em had gone to join Skit, Reid, and a typically hyper-enthusiastic Olympia while Graves and Cat stood together at the opposite end of the room, her arms tightly folded. They were facing each other, but clearly not speaking; Graves was looking up at the ceiling, his hands in his pockets, while Cat stared straight ahead, only turning her head slowly once she noticed Julian pausing with confusion near the door. 

Before Julian could think of something to say, he felt someone knock into his shoulder from behind. “Nice shirt,” muttered Lam Archman, strolling past him and falling into the desk beside his sister, who immediately stepped away.

Not that it bothered Lam. He propped his feet up on the adjacent desk, leaning back. “Nero,” he said, smiling violently. “Catastrophe. What a pleasure as always to see you both. Jules,” Lam added with a slur of inattention, not entirely turning in Julian’s direction. “Not sure how you plan to work from over there, mate.”

“I can’t do this,” Graves said in a not-quite-low-enough voice to Cat, who flinched with annoyance.

“Look, we just have t-”

“Mr Kinney, please join your ensemble,” Professor Archman said, having materialized from his adjoining office. Julian, who hadn’t really been aware that he hadn’t moved yet, leapt quickly to the opposite side of the room, edging uncertainly over to Cat.

“Right, well, get to work,” Archman said, which was presumably the entirety of his opening remarks until he seemed to recall, distractedly, that Julian was the aforementioned Mr Kinney. “Ah, has anyone in the class suffered any traumatizing losses?” Archman asked. 

Lam promptly choked on something Julian suspected to be a laugh.

“Deaths,” Archman clarified, as the rest of the classroom stared blankly at him. “Has anyone recently suffered a death?”

“I’m guessing they’re all alive,” Lam said. 

“Right, well, Mr Kinney is an orpheus, so I would ask the class to please not panic at the sight of any supernatural or hallucinatory events. If you feel faint you are invited to quietly step outside. Okay, to work,” said Archman, disappearing into his office again just in time for the rest of the room to begin consulting each other about this in whispers.

“Nice shirt,” Lam repeated loudly to Julian.

“It’s yours,” Julian replied.

“No shit,” said Lam. “Did you think I was confused?”

“I can’t do this,” said Graves absently. “I shouldn’t even _have_ to do this—”

“Oh, how tragic,” said Lam with a derogatory look of pity. “Why do such terrible things always happen to you and no one else, Nero? You must be fucking cursed.”

“Lam, for fuck’s sake,” said Cat through her teeth at the same time Graves said, “Fuck off, Calamity.”

“I love this journey for us,” said Lam, stretching his arms overhead until his own t-shirt (right side-out and free of any fuckery-related slogans) drifted up past his navel.

It seemed fairly clear to Julian that he should understand what was happening by now. It was also exceedingly obvious that he somehow didn’t.

“Sorry, but like… what are we doing,” attempted Julian slowly, to which Graves gave him a wearied look that seemed to suggest he had the same or similar questions.

“Well.” Lam planted both feet on the ground, launching himself up from the desk. “We are your ensemble this term, Julian, which is excellent news for you specifically, given our collective lack of triggering qualities and/or grisly events. Here’s a general summation of the facts: Catastrophe Archman is, of course, your classic prom queen,” Lam announced. “Nothing ever goes wrong in her life except sadly, daddy doesn’t love her and mummy’s a little too dead to care.” Cat flinched and said nothing while Lam, unfazed, continued, “I am of course unbearable, also notably homicidal though at times an unwelcome source of levity, while Nero here is our tragic chosen one, incapable of actual human emotion and inconveniently forced to work with the guy who killed his secret girlfr-”

“STOP,” said Cat, her voice suddenly causing everyone in the room to look at her with such a sharp, compelling magnitude that if Julian hadn’t already been looking at her, he felt sure his head would have snapped in her direction.

The room was quiet for a moment, Cat taking in a heaving breath, as Lam turned back to Julian.

“Which leaves you,” Lam determined, crossing his arms and facing Julian without any acknowledgement of his twin’s outburst. “What do you suppose you are, Julian Kinney?”

Julian had the sudden, nightmarish urge to laugh and call his mother, assuring her that Sam wasn’t dead. She’d clearly just jumped from one body to another, and presumably she might have preferred this one anyway. She always resented having to sit down to use the toilet.

“Blocked,” Julian said, clearing his throat. “And probably useless.”

“Cool,” said Lam, “cool, cool, cool,” and then he strode to the basement door and walked out, leaving a white-knuckled Graves and pale-faced Cat to stare firmly at the floor between them.

“I’m not working with him,” Graves said unnecessarily. “I’d rather fail the course.”

“You’re not going to fail the course,” Cat replied, her voice robotic with impatience.

Graves shook his head. “I’ll talk to Thurston. She’ll change her mind.”

“She won’t,” Cat expelled with a sigh.

“She has to. She can’t let this happen. Your father can’t just—”

“Professor Archman,” Cat cut in. “And yes, he can. He and Thurston are obviously in agreement on this.”

“And you think this is just… fine?” Graves snapped.

For a moment, the energy between them prickled with the vestiges of an old argument.

“You do realize,” Julian said, helpless as he always was to his compulsion to diffuse the tension in the room, “if I sing, Sam will show up. She always does.”

Graves tensed but said nothing. “Not always,” Cat warily pointed out, her meandering gaze proving she hadn’t forgotten that her dead mother had been present in this exact classroom. 

“She’ll come this time,” Julian pointed out. “If the four of us sing together, then it’ll be Sam. Definitely.”

“My mom might show up again,” Cat said. “Or Graves’ dad, or—”

“It’ll be Sam,” Julian said, turning to Graves, whom he knew for a tacit fact would believe him. Inexplicably, he felt calmly sure.

He waited, but after a moment’s silence Graves exhaled without meeting his eye.

“Still,” he said, and turned to leave, though he paused long enough to exchange a loaded glance with Julian.

Or at least it seemed loaded. Not that Julian could translate it; it seemed, maybe, like _we’ll continue this later conversation later_ , but the next thing he knew, Graves was gone, leaving Julian alone with Cat.

She was vibrating with frustration, looking as twitchy as Julian had felt all day. “Why did you say that?”

“What?”

“Why’d you specifically point out that we’d see Sam?”

“I thought maybe it would convince him to stay.”

Cat looked at him sharply. “Why?”

“Well…” Julian spread his hands, a little taken aback. “Wouldn’t you want to see her?”

“Of course. Of _course_.” She seemed bitterly furious for a second, then shook her head, casting off her mood like an ill-fitting sweater. “But Graves…” She looked up, staring at a nothing-spot on the ceiling. “You can’t listen to Lam," she said tangentially. "He doesn’t mean any of it.”

Ha, Julian thought. “Believe me, I can tell the difference between radical honesty and someone angling for a fight.”

“Lam couldn’t have actually killed her.” Cat looked at him squarely. “You should know that, at least.”

“I know.” He didn’t.

“He wouldn’t actually harm a fly, no matter what he says.”

“I know.” He didn’t. 

“And it was an accident."

“I know.” He didn’t.

But it did seem increasingly unlikely.

“So you think they’ll be able to work together?” Cat asked, sounding doubtful.

“I think they’ll ultimately have no choice.” He leaned onto the desk beside her. “They just have to work out whatever this is.”

“Grief,” she murmured, and looked irritated again. “As if they’re the only ones grieving.” She peered closely at him for a second, half-frowning. “If anyone should be upset about this, it should be you.”

Actually, Julian was glad that Archman was so fucking oblivious or ambivalent or whatever while Thurston was so clearly attempting to teach them something, or to force them to confront their issues. He wanted to know what Sam had felt, what she had seen. He craved it like a forbidden thing, the knowledge of the piece she’d been. He wanted to take her place, albeit not selfishly. More like perversely, obscenely, hugely problematically. He wanted to feel every beat of her heart like it was his own, like he was an echo. Like he was the ghost of her, rather than the unbearable reverse.

“Look, I know that nobody here killed Sam. It just is what it is,” Julian lied, because something definitely had, and if it wasn’t one of them, then it was all of them. If it wasn’t Lam, then it was something else; something Samara Kinney had felt while being here, right here, with her feet planted on this basement floor and these three other people standing around her, betraying her and worshipping her and destroying themselves over whatever she’d made them feel. Something had happened here; something she’d managed to suffer so acutely she’d divested herself of every word she’d ever written and then gone for a swim that she wouldn’t survive. 

Sam had always been alive. Not just in the literal sense, but in the metaphysical, the realms of metaphor. She had more _life_ in her than anyone Julian had ever known. She'd had so much of it that she created multiples of them, walking out of her life in the desert only to find a new one, leaving Julian and Destiny and failure behind. She should've had enough life in her to propel her out of this one, too, if she’d wanted, but that wasn't what happened. And thus, Julian wanted to feel every insufferable moment of whatever it had been. He wanted to retrace her _precise_ steps, her _exact_ breaths, and that was only possible if everything was a precise carbon copy of exactly what she’d left behind.

“Let’s just… call it for the day,” Cat exhaled, rubbing her temple and gesturing them to the door. “You need a shower,” she added with a weary playfulness, and Julian grimaced, raising the fabric of his (Lam’s) shirt to his nose for a sniff. 

“Wow. Yeah.” He shuddered. “Yikes.”

“Maybe something will come to you,” she added. “With your song, I mean. I always think things have a tendency to clear up in the shower.”

He doubted it, but sure. “The others say you have an odd songwriting process,” he remarked, to which Cat rolled her eyes.

“I just don’t like to do it with people around. It’s private, you know?” Julian nodded. “They make jokes about it, but I just can’t focus.” Ironically, she looked distracted as she spoke. “And you may have noticed by now that I kind of… lack patience,” Cat said with a sheepish side glance, to which Julian chuckled.

“Not really. Not to me,” he said, choosing boldly (and perhaps recklessly) to add, “but I guess Graves said I chill you out or something.”

“You do,” Cat confirmed, looking unsurprised and thankfully unoffended. Apparently this had been her own observation. “Sam said you had the same effect on her,” she added. “You’re like… I don’t know, calm.”

“I’m actually not at all,” Julian said. Because he wasn’t. 

She smiled at him, then sighed. “Well, I’m—” She shaded her eyes again, looking up at him. “I’m actually going to write now, I think. You need a shower anyway,” she said again, nudging his shoulder with her own.

He nudged her back, the two of them briefly leaning against each other before she pulled out of reach, flashing a glance over her shoulder when they reached the dorms. _Don’t go_ , he thought restlessly, an old fear of loneliness tightening his chest.

“Wait,” Julian said, catching the tips of her fingers. 

“Yes?” 

The breeze slid some platinum hair into her eyes and she brushed it away with her free hand, not releasing his.

“I was just wondering how Graves and Lam met,” Julian said, as Cat tilted her head with surprise. “I mean they were friends, weren’t they?”

“Yes.” She looked uncomfortable. 

“Was it like… because of school, or…?”

“Lam saved Graves,” Cat said. “From drowning.”

“What?”

That was enough for him to drop her hand entirely, though he wasn’t sure who’d technically let go first.

“I have to go,” said Cat, already walking away before Julian registered that she’d spoken.

* * *

Julian spent the remainder of the week making great progress on his song. Just kidding! He was incapable of wordage, wording, words words words they all increasingly meant nothing as he succumbed further each day to the melting pressure of the void. Rhymes were a disaster, a tyrannical farce. Everything was (cut to gasping sobs) absolutely fine, please stop asking. It was beginning to pulse against the inside of his skull like a headache, filling his mouth with a nauseating bile. Joy! For those who make magic, indeed.

Saturday morning involved some sort of Olympia-sponsored lunch and a bike ride around the perimeter of the lake, ostensibly intended to inspire him. It didn’t work, and Em had not come along, which was unusual only in that Olympia seemed to be fretting about the fact that Em had not come along. 

“Em hates bikes,” Reid reminded her.

“But Em hates everything,” Olympia said mournfully.

“Is that supposed to make sense?” said Skit.

“Em hates everything but they still _do_ it,” protested Olympia. 

This was uninteresting to Julian, though when the bike-riding did little to spur anything aside from back pain and a certain stiffness between his legs, he did at least remember that Em had suggested (in Em’s critically unhelpful way) that he do something different. 

So he did something _wildly_ different. And possibly stupid.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” said Julian.

“Oh,” said Destiny. “Are you hurt?”

“What? No?”

“In trouble?”

“No.”

“What time is it there?”

“I don’t know. Not late. Eight-ish?”

“So what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“So why are you calling?”

“I have no idea,” Julian said honestly.

“Well, alright then,” Destiny sighed. “Do you need anything? Towels?”

“I can buy towels.”

“With what money?”

This was such a stupid fucking idea. “I’ve got enough money for towels.”

“Fine.” Pause. “Are you sure you’re not sick?”

“Why would I be sick?”

“You know what I mean.”

Ah, yes. That kind of sick. “I’m taking my pills. I’m fine.”

“Okay. Okay fine. So what, then?”

Julian stared at Lam’s empty bed.

“Is it true you were talking to Sam?” he asked his mother. “Before she died.”

A pause.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t your business.”

“It wasn’t my business that my sister called to tell you she was alive? I had no idea where she was, what she was doing, whether she was safe—”

“So?”

“So you don’t think that was, I don’t know, kind of hard for me?”

Another pause.

“You spent too long at that psycho ward,” Destiny said eventually, and Julian could see her, the way her lips pursed together with disapproval. “They just told you it’s okay to feel sorry for yourself all the time instead of actually doing something with your life.”

“I had a manic episode. Basically a psychotic break.” This was laughable. Whose idea was this? Oh yes, Em’s. Note to self. “You really think that was just self-pity?”

“What do you want me to say? I was fine. Your sister was fine. Only you had to try and get yourself killed.”

“I didn’t—” Why, Julian thought, jaw clenched. Why had he done this to himself. “Look, I have to go.”

“Then go.”

“Mom.” Julian swallowed. “Did she at least tell you why she left?”

“Maybe you drove her away,” Destiny said, and hung up. 

Julian closed his eyes, letting the phone fall from his hand. Were there any lyrics he could pull from this, at least?

Nope. His brain was sealed shut.

He rose to his feet with a sigh, reaching for the bottle of lithium before realizing with a jolt that it was nearly empty. He wouldn’t have enough for the morning—fuck, he’d meant to call in for a refill but then Olympia had shown up with the bikes, the fucking bikes. Would the pharmacy off campus still be open?

He closed his hand around the bottle. _Only you had to try and get yourself killed._

Guess he was about to find out.

* * *

Collegetown, the little Main Street area just outside of the conservatory’s campus, was packed and unhelpful. Julian’s primary mistake had been to venture out on a Saturday night, where it took half an hour to discover the university-run boutique pharmacy was closed and he would have to take an Uber to the closest chain pharmacy in the non-university affiliated neighboring town. The ride itself was enough to ensure he would not be buying new towels anytime in the near future, not that he expected to need to.

It was still upstate and rural, so while there was a row of bars and restaurants crawling with what was probably the majority of the small town’s population, it wasn’t nearly as packed as collegetown had been. Julian was able to request a refill on his lithium and was told it would be an hour’s wait. So, in the good news column: he would not be having a mental breakdown in the morning if he could help it.

He wandered the street outside, not wanting to wait beneath the white light beams of the pharmacy. In the evening air—the sunset lost to the outlines of buildings like the mere suggestion of itself—the smell of booze and smoke rendered it the closest Julian had gotten to being home since he'd arrived. It was almost comforting, actually. He wondered if Sam had ever come here and decided she probably had. She was like a blue collar mosquito, greedily drawn to the blood of the working class. 

Julian was just passing a dilapidated-looking bar when he heard something. Karaoke, by the sounds of it, which certainly wasn’t unusual for a place of this particular dive. But it was the specific voice he was hearing that drew him inside.

“ID?” prompted the bouncer, and then looked down. It was fake, but whatever. “Vegas, huh?”

“Yep,” said Julian, craning to see the tiny, makeshift stage. 

“You over at the college?”

“No, the conservatory.”

“Ah,” said the bouncer. “Another one of those.”

He gestured over his shoulder and Julian caught sight of Calamity Archman where he stood on stage, the strap of an electric guitar slipped across his shoulders. “Enjoy the show,” said the bouncer.

The guitar wailed a little and Lam flung his hair from his eyes, drenching himself with a water bottle. He had a band behind him, a drummer and another singer, a bass player, but this was clearly the Lam Archman show, as much as it had been when Julian had first seen him perform. The room wasn’t packed, but there was a crowd, a ring of tables with chairs that faced a cramped and unembellished stage.

The only significant source of lighting—a spotlight angled downward at the stage—revealed that Lam was wearing the shirt. _Fuck you, fuck this, fuck me_. Julian had placed it, washed and folded, on Lam’s bed the night before only to find it missing when he woke up, which was the entirety of their recent interactions. Shoemaker’s elves. Between bright lights and sweat, the worn fabric was translucent, the tattooed sun visible where it sank behind the inked-in mountain range on Lam's chest. 

Julian had been right, then. Resent it though he might, Lam was not himself without his talent.

Julian took a seat in the back as the waitress came over to him. “Thirsty?”

She was almost laughably wholesome compared to the vibrantly colored hair and multiple piercings he’d gotten so accustomed to seeing on the bards at Dives. Her curly hair was tied up in a high ponytail, her plain t-shirt knotted around her waist, a pencil tucked behind her ear. She looked like someone he’d see at home (as opposed to a white-haired blink of sun, like the glimmer off a diamond).

“What can I get for like…” He fished around in his wallet. “Uh, like $10? Plus tip.”

“Honey.” She laughed. “Be right back.”

“Alright, well,” said Lam from the stage, his voice oddly foreign through the mic’s feedback. “Ummmm, should we do a fan favorite? Or should I just sing whatever I want ‘cause you guys are too drunk to give a fuck. You know what, let’s just—” He rang out a dissonant chord that resolved itself to a hum through the amp. “Yeah, fuck it, let's do this.”

“Here you go,” said the waitress, placing four (4) beers on the table next to Julian and two shots of something dark, probably whiskey, plus a shot of tequila. “That last one’s on the house.”

That was very interesting. “Thanks, but there’s no possible way I’m drinking all of this alone.”

She bent over, plucking one of the shot glasses and raising it to her lips. Julian did the same, though he made a point of watching her tip her head back to let the alcohol slide down her very pretty throat.

“There,” she said, placing the empty shot glasses back on her tray. “You don’t have an early bedtime, do you?” 

“No. Why?”

“I get off late,” she purred in his ear, and Julian chuckled into his beer.

Yeah, he missed sex. Definitely. But he was only going to be here for… forty more minutes or so. Brief window of meaningless flirtation it would be.

“ _On the corner of Main Street, just trying to keep it in line_ ,” sang Lam, drawing Julian’s attention as he took a sip of watery light beer. The drum kicked steadily, throbbing idly while the chords stretched and yawned. “ _You say you wanna move on, and you say I’m falling behind—can you read my mind_?” 

There was no question Lam was tipsy, potentially also stoned. Still, he wasn’t pretending, he wasn’t acting. He wasn’t condescending or pissing anyone off, he was just… singing.

The spotlight glanced off his dark hair and Lam closed his eyes. “ _I never really gave up on breakin’ out of this two-star town._ _I got the green light, I got a little fight, I’m gonna turn this thing around—can you read my mind_?” 

He fiddled with the pick, playing out an unfussy melodic line on the guitar. If he was using any magic, it wasn’t obvious aside from the general sense of rapture in the room, or the rippling effect of the bass on Julian’s coven of cheap beers. 

“ _The good old days, the honest man, the restless heart, the promised land, a subtle kiss that no one sees, a broken wrist and a big trapeze—_ ”

Somehow Lam spotted Julian at precisely that moment, his lips curling into a sudden, belligerent smile as he leapt into the chorus.

“ _Well, I don’t mind, you don’t mind, cause I don’t shine if you don’t shine. Before you go,_ ” he said, tipping the mic back like a wolf howling at the moon, “ _can you read my mind_?”

“Nice shirt,” mouthed Julian, toasting Lam with his half-drunk beer.

Lam swung a sweat-soaked curl from his eye, yanking the mic from the stand and taking the stage with the same prowl he’d used to mock Graves. “ _It’s funny how you just break down_ ,” he sang to Julian, “ _waiting on some sign. I pull up to the front of your driveway with magic soaking my spine, can you read my mind? Can you read my mind?_ ”

“You know him?” asked the waitress, materializing again at Julian’s side.

“Nope,” said Julian. 

“He looks like he knows you,” she commented, plucking Julian’s beer from his hand and taking a sip as Lam brought the mic back to his lips.

“T _he teenage queen, the loaded gun, the drop dead dream, the Chosen One—_ ”

Julian froze with the beer partway to his lips, wondering for a moment if all Lam Archman’s songs would make him strain like this, desperate to hear the next word out of his mouth. Meanwhile, Lam’s hips caroused blithely, as light on his feet as he had been that first time he sang in his father’s classroom. 

“ _Oh well, I don’t mind, you don’t mind_ ,” sang Lam, jumping idly from the stage and reaching for Julian, slinging the guitar behind his back, “ _cause I don’t shine if you don’t shine. Before you jump_ ,” he said, whether mockingly or not, “ _tell me what you find when you read my mind_.”

The words were swallowed up by Lam’s guitar, which he wasn’t playing. Nobody else seemed to notice, drawn into the song as they were, and Lam yanked Julian to his feet in time with the music, which was pulsing now unmistakably, as if they’d been swallowed up inside it. The song had come to life, filling the room, vibrating in the walls, the air itself syncopating to the waves of Lam’s voice. “ _Slipping in my faith until I fall, he never returned that call. Woman, open the door, don’t let it sting, I wanna breathe that fire again—_ ”

He spun Julian under his arm and Julian, for whatever reason, did so gladly, beginning to bounce on his toes when Lam did.

“ _She said I don’t mind, you don’t mind,_ ” sang Lam, to which Julian joined in, _“cause I don’t shine if you don’t shine—_ ”

“ _Put your back on me, put your back on me_ ,” Lam shout-sang at Julian while Julian shout-sang the chorus back at him, throat going hoarse while sound loomed in the room, cavernous. One beer should not have been enough to feel like this, but it was like Calamity Archman had flipped a switch inside his chest. It would be freedom now, euphoria or nothing.

“ _The stars are blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun_ ,” Lam exhaled, so drenched in sweat his forearm saturated Julian’s chest, “ _when you read my mind_.”

He took a fistful of Julian’s shirt and then tossed him backwards, discarding him like waste. Julian stumbled, the temporary suspension between them burning up, burning out.

“Fuck,” said Julian to his toes when Lam swung back to the stage, returning his attention to the guitar in his hands for the song’s outro. Julian staggered back his seat, as legless as if he’d spent the last seven hours at sea. 

“You sure you don’t know each other?” asked the waitress.

His beer was warm now, newly frothed as if it had been shaken. He drank what remained of his glass, gulping it like water. The floor was slick with spilled drinks, an ocean of imbibement and humidity and _Lam saved Graves from drowning_ and _we’re so sorry for your loss_ and his own babbling— _Sam was an excellent swimmer, she loved pools, we’re desert kids_ —and Julian suddenly thought, fuck.

Fuck, he killed my sister.

“I gotta go,” he said, crumpling the bills into the waitress’s hand and stumbling for the door, making his way back to the pharmacy’s blinding lights. 

God, it was hot. How was it still so hot? Global warming, perpetual hell. He walked the sidewalks through the sodden discomfort of it, the sky that needed desperately to ring itself out like a towel. The shock of the pharmacy’s air conditioning and the zip of fluorescence drove Julian to a wince as he became aware of the spilled beer marinating from his pores.

“Last name?”

“Kinney. Has it been an hour?”

“Not yet, but you’re in luck.”

“Thanks.” Julian pulled out the bills with unsteady fingers.

“Are you getting regular blood tests?”

“What?”

“Your hands, they’re shaking.”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I'm... I’m good til next month.” He palmed the orange bottle and turned, smacking directly into Lam’s sodden t-shirt.

“Liar,” said Lam in a low voice.

Julian’s heart raced beside his throat. “Lam, hey. Sorry, I was just—”

“Did you not enjoy the show?” replied Lam’s acidic tone, and Julian looked up. Eyeliner had smudged and blurred Lam’s bleary dark eyes, leaking into lines and shadow. 

“Show, huh?” Julian forced a hard laugh. “Who was it for?”

Lam said nothing, and now, with his feet on solid ground, Julian wondered if he’d somehow been mistaken. For a moment he’d been certain—he’d _felt_ it, truth, in a way that he could not explain aside from the pure act of knowing. The infallible human instincts had said run and don’t look back, but now Julian was here, unmoving while his roommate swung a set of car keys between his finger and his thumb.

Julian knew that kind of recklessness; had known it since he was born. She was there again, laughing with her chin high. _Jules, come on, stay with me, don’t let go!_

“Are you grieving or atoning?” Julian said.

Lam looked down at the bottle in Julian’s hand, then back up.

“Come on,” he said, probably sensing Julian wasn’t capable of running anymore. He beckoned with his chin, turning to the door. “We’re going to finish your fucking song.”

* * *

Lam’s solution to Julian being blocked was apparently to go for a drive. Technically Julian drove, considering himself probably the soberer of the two, though Lam pointed from time to time and then abruptly demanded the car be stopped, which Julian thought meant he was going to throw up. Instead, Lam flung open the car door (it was an old BMW, nothing special, not classic enough to be vintage but not new enough to be flashy) and slammed it shut, venturing unevenly into the adjacent stretch of woods.

Julian rolled down the window, frowning. “Lam, where are y-”

“Grab my effects, Jules,” Lam called over his shoulder. “And stop yelling.”

“Lam, I’m not—”

“Stop yelling!” Lam yelled. “They’re in the glove compartment.”

This was stupid, Julian thought. He was either going to follow the guy who might have killed his sister into the goddamn woods or

Or

…?

He sighed, grabbing the metal tin from the glove compartment and chasing after Lam, slowing only once he realized that Lam himself was loping at a glacial pace.

“Here,” Julian said, offering the tin and its contents to Lam.

“Not yet,” said Lam. “Not there yet.”

“Where are we—”

Lam cut him off with a glare.

“Fine.” Julian settled into a pseudo-comfortable ramble beside him as the trees thinned, revealing a shallow stretch of beach. They must have been below the campus bluffs, somewhere along the lake Julian had so often looked at from above.

“So,” Lam said, leaves and rubble crunching below his worn-out sneakers. “What are the pills for?”

Oh fun, personal questions. “My brain,” muttered Julian.

“Goodness,” Lam replied with a bludgeoning tone of vitriol. “And here I thought you’d be unpleasant to be around.”

“If you don’t worry about your own unpleasantness, why should I?”

“Nonsense. Keeps me up at night,” said Lam. “So? Brain pills? Usual problems or weird ones? Weird ones, given the song,” he answered himself.

“What’s weird is one man writing another man’s song,” Julian pointed out, deciding to force them both to acknowledge Lam’s contribution for the first time.

“I didn’t realize you took issue with what one man did with another in the privacy of his own bedroom,” Lam remarked.

“What? I’m not saying I’m—” Julian broke off, realizing Lam was laughing at him. “Oh, fuck you.”

“Maybe later. Anyway, pills?”

No point lying. Who was Lam going to tell? Certainly nobody who'd believe him. “I get manic sometimes. Well, one time. More times. But one time in specific.”

“Grieving or atoning?” Lam asked dully.

Julian turned to look at him. Lam, unfazed, looked back.

“You said the song was whiny,” Julian said, changing the subject.

“It _is_ whiny. Nobody wants to hear about you trying to die,” Lam said. “Not unless there’s a reason you’re alive now. You’re missing the turn.”

“The turn?”

“Yeah. You can’t just crave death willy-nilly,” said Lam, dropping suddenly onto a rock that Julian nearly tripped over. “The song has to turn on your reason to live.”

“I didn’t realize you were such an optimist.” Lam was apparently making himself comfortable, so Julian settled less comfortably beside him.

“Music is for the collective,” Lam said, waving a hand. “There’s nothing collective about wanting to _not_ exist. Mass extinction is not in our natures. We endure, even when we don’t want to.”

He reached for the tin and Julian handed it to him, unsurprised to find that it contained marijuana and tobacco paper. Lam set about rolling and Julian watched his hands, finding them unexpectedly clean. Something about Lam (perhaps Lam himself?) screamed anarchist dirtbag, not tidy nail beds.

Ah, Julian thought, catching the bruises on two swollen middle knuckles. There it was.

“Your song is shit because it’s fake,” Lam said unprompted, and Julian blinked.

“What?”

“You’re writing as a dead person when here you are, clearly alive.” Lam looked searchingly at Julian for a second before dropping his attention back to the joint he was rolling. “That’s the hook. The shift. The reason for living.”

“What’s yours?”

At the time he thought to ask it, Julian meant it to be derogatory. At this moment, watching Lam flick open the lighter, he found he simply meant it.

“Dunno,” said Lam.

He raised the joint to his lips, holding it between two fingers while he saturated the tip in smoke. He inhaled deeply, a meditational inhale, and exhaled on a low timbre, like a contented hum.

“I saw her right before it happened,” Julian said. “Or at least I thought I did. I’m still not sure if it was real or not.”

It was brief, at the back of the diner where Destiny had worked when they were kids. Julian still went there from time to time after Sam had left. He’d seen the shape of her and thought that’s her, but then immediately thought, was it? He had seen Sam everywhere once she’d gone. At the gas station. Coming around the corner. The model on the billboards. The driver with the big sunglasses when he was crossing the street.

But that time, she’d said his name.

Or maybe she hadn’t.

His memory of that night was foggy now, to the point where he couldn’t quite remember. He only remembered the car, the woman in the road, the zip of bright lights. 

Julian closed his eyes. _It’s all in your mind._

“Here.” Lam handed him the joint. “You need this more than I do.”

Julian shook his head. “Someone has to get us home.”

“Okay.” Lam rose to his feet, inhaling again. “Fine. Then let’s go.”

* * *

The car was Professor Archman’s, though whether or not Lam had permission to use it was not a question Julian felt necessary to ask. Lam directed Julian to the staff parking lot and then they climbed through the window onto the flat span of roof outside their room, where it appeared Lam spent most of his time. There were two other lighters out there, a mismatched pair of socks, an empty water bottle.

This time, when Julian was offered the joint, he took it.

“It’s not so bad,” said Julian, who had a tendency to feel the effects of things instantaneously. Sam always said it was a habit of his, the way he got so easily carried away. It was an observation that would stick with him firmly in her absence. “I think sometimes I misremember it.”

“Bullshit,” said Lam. “It was bad.”

Julian hazily considered saying that there was no way Lam would know that, but there was a chance he did. Anyone who knew Sam might know. Maybe. Assuming that Julian had not imagined that as well, though maybe he had. He felt fidgety, anxious with uncertainty at his ponderance of what was real. (What were the side effects of marijuana again?)

“She was in contact with Destiny,” Julian pointed out. “So it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“She couldn’t help herself,” Lam said, shrugging as he added, “Everyone has a weakness.”

“And Sam’s was… our mother?” That stung. If they shared the same origin story then why hadn’t they shared the same desperation, the same ache? God, he felt swaddled in melancholy. He kicked aimlessly at one of the roof tiles, lashing out from his rueful malaise.

“Sam had her reasons for not seeing you,” Lam said, reading Julian’s mind and huffing out a perfectly circular smoke ring. He hummed again and it clung to the air, frozen in time, before Lam waved it away again, passing the joint over to Julian. “The thing with Destiny was just a compulsion, like drugs. She was detoxing from it and needed a few hits, safe ones. You were real, you were home.” He folded his arms behind his head, closing his eyes as Julian took a hit of his own. “She just wasn’t ready to go home yet.”

“Don’t,” coughed Julian.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t… make it better. Put ideas in my head.” He groaned with phantom pain, incorporeal and visceral, and passed the joint back to Lam. “Sometimes I feel hope, sometimes I think I’m just crazy, like I imagined the whole thing. It’s like my whole life since she left is some pathetic volley back and forth. It’s better than I think it is, no it’s worse.” 

“The storm maker says it ain’t so bad,” Lam said nonsensically. “The dream maker’s gonna make you mad.”

“What is that, Dr. Seuss?” Julian said, turning to squint at him.

In answer, Lam dragged himself onto all fours, scrabbling unsteadily up to the edge of the roof. He army-crawled forward and then peered over the edge, nearly folding over it, flicking sparks of ash onto the grass five floors below.

“The spaceman says everybody look down,” Lam said, and Julian gave an unexpected snort-laugh, like, yeah, that’s it exactly, and then he coughed again, choking on nothing.

“It’s all in your mind,” he contributed, eyes watering, and then Lam turned over his shoulder, peering at Julian while he twirled the smoldering joint between his fingers.

“Get a pen,” Lam said, his brows furrowed and his eyes wide, and luminescent.

* * *

Lam had taken his shirt off. The sun that was tattooed across the left side of his chest was again setting and rising indistinguishably, and Julian was barefoot, spare bits of twig and gravel from the roof now sticking to the sweat on his calves. They’d sung the chorus three times and were working on the second verse. 

“Are you grieving or atoning?” Julian asked again.

“Get you a man who can do both,” Lam coughed.

Sam was there, briefly. _Idiots_ , she mouthed, or so Julian would tell himself in the morning.

“No, I’m serious,” said Julian.

Lam contemplated this for half a second before lunging halfway through the window into their room, his legs dangling beside Julian’s head. Julian poked the arch of Lam’s foot with the pen, a cheap Bic that read Holiday Inn Express along the side. “Hello?”

“Here,” said Lam, returning to full form with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand.

“Do you realize how shitty this is to drink straight?” said Julian, making a face.

“I don’t know, _do_ I?” mocked Lam, pouring some directly down his throat. 

“This,” Julian said, accepting the bottle once it was handed to him. “This is exactly what I mean. This isn’t grief, man, this is punishment.” He took a pull and proved it true, suffering the burn from the bridge of his nose to his eyeballs. “Jesus, hand me the spliff.”

“Take the wheel,” said Lam, adding, "it's right there."

“What?”

Lam leaned forward with a growl, producing what remained of the joint from behind Julian’s ear. “Here,” he said, and tugged at Julian’s chin, parting his lips and placing the joint between them, securing it between Julian’s protesting teeth. “Lighter,” Lam mumbled to himself, and Julian waited there like the subject of a portrait, unmoving, until Lam finally spotted one at the opposite end of the roof’s edge.

“Fuck,” said Lam, and then he shrugged, turning back to Julian. “ _You are my fire_ ,” he sang in a low, spiced mumble. “ _My one desire_ —”

“Shit,” said Julian, accidentally letting the joint fall from his teeth when the edge suddenly popped with flame. “Shit, shit, shit—”

It burned a hole in his t-shirt and he stared at the singed fabric, watching the little serpentine tongue of smoke until it slithered and disappeared. Lam had already lain back down on the roof by then, one eye closed while he traced invisible lines from star to star.

“Lam,” said Julian.

Lam ignored him.

“Lam. Calamity.”

Nothing.

“Can Graves do that too?” asked Julian innocently, to which Lam swung upright to glare at him.

“No,” he said irritably.

“I see,” said Julian. 

He grabbed the lighter from where it sat on the edge of the roof, flicking it twice to produce the same effect Lam had somehow accomplished via the Backstreet Boys.

“You can do things the others can’t,” Julian observed, inhaling deeply.

“Yep,” said Lam. “It’s why Cat hates me.”

Julian paused. “She hates you? She’s your twin.”

“Funny how blood doesn’t necessarily mean shit, huh?” Lam said, turning his head. He’d returned to his apathetic savasana by then. “Anyway, love and hate are the same.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Julian.

“Okay,” said Lam.

“Did you really kill Sam?” Julian asked.

“Yeah,” said Lam, and half of a fourth of Julian’s one remaining brain cell thought there it is, case closed, mystery solved while the rest of him protested, annoyed. “I could have saved her and I wasn’t there.”

That’s not the same thing, Julian said, but his mouth felt tired and his tongue felt heavy, so maybe he didn’t or maybe he did. Either way he doubted it was important.

Instead he took another hit, coughing again. “I thought I saw her and instead of thinking she finally came back for me, I just… lost it. I completely lost it.” He paused. “I’m fine,” he said, rattling the pills in his pocket for emphasis. “Cured or whatever. But I still hear her voice at night. Sometimes.”

“Write that down,” said Lam.

Julian twisted around for the page, scribbling it illegibly.

“Sing,” Lam said.

“ _She put the lime in the coconut, she drank ‘em both up_ ,” sang Julian.

“Not that,” Lam muttered. “Sing the fucking song.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to see her.” Lam was sitting upright again, no longer in his corpse pose. Lucky him, thought Julian. Lucky them to be so alive when Sam was dead. _Fuck you, fuck this, fuck me._ He’d put Lam’s stupid shirt back on at some point and now he fingered the letters carefully, like filigree. Fuck her for leaving, fuck this for happening, fuck them for being too broken to cope.

“I want it fast,” Julian said, his heart racing, beats on beats per minute, minute, minute. “You know what I mean?”

“Sing the goddamn song,” Lam said, so Julian rose to his feet, turning his chin toward the stars and howling.

“ _Oh oh oh-oh, oh oh oh-oh-oh_ —”

“ _Baaaaaah daaaaah daaaaaaah duhhhhh_ ,” answered Lam dutifully.

“ _It started with a low light_ ,” Julian sang. “ _Next thing I knew, they ripped me from my bed and then they took my blood type, it left a strange impression in my head—_ ”

“ _You know that I was hoping_ ,” came Lam’s voice, mixing with Julian’s, “ _that I could leave this star-crossed world behind, but when they cut me open I guess that changed my mind—_ ”

Sam was hovering at the roof’s edge, balancing barefoot on her toes like a gymnast on the beam. She turned her head, smiling at Julian, and winked, pretending to tumble sideways before righting herself.

“ _And you know, I might have have just flown too far from the floor this time ‘cause they’re calling me by my name, and they’re zipping white light beams, disregarding bombs and satellites. That was the turning point, that was one lonely night—_ ”

Sam spun, facing them both with a maniacal look of pleasure as she threw her arms up and danced. Hair swinging, arms waving. She beckoned to Lam and he crawled towards her, entranced.

“ _The storm maker says it ain’t so bad, the dream maker’s gonna make you mad, the spaceman says everybody look down, it’s all in your mind_.”

“Keep singing!” shouted Lam, so Julian kept singing while Lam held out a hand for Sam’s.

And somehow, miraculously, Sam… took it.

“ _Well now I’m back at home and I’m looking forward to this life I live_ ,” Julian managed, blinking away the effects of drugs and abject sadness and wondering how much of this was real. Sam shimmied her hips, dripping like water down the expanse of Lam’s bare torso. “ _You know it’s gonna haunt me, so hesitation to this life I give. You think you might cross over, you’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. You’d better look it over_ ,” he pleaded with Sam, who twirled beneath Lam’s arm and let out a silent laugh, _“before you make that leap—_ ”

“ _And you know_ ,” Lam joined in, euphoric, “ _I’m fine, but I hear those voices at night sometimes. They justify my claim, and the public don’t dwell on my transmission cause it wasn’t televised, but that was the turning point. Oh, what a lonely night—_ ”

“ _The storm maker says it ain’t so bad_ ,” Julian said, choking on salt. “ _The dream maker’s gonna make you mad_.”

“Don’t let go!” shrieked Sam, fifteen years old, seven, twenty-one, everything, everything. “Jules, don’t let go!”

But his mouth had gone dry with envy and the music was fading, and she wasn’t there anymore, not really. She would never take his hand and run again. The knowledge of it was dwarfing him, the loss devouring him whole again. He saw her there in that restaurant, calling his name, and knew it was him, it had always been him. He was the one atoning.

Julian blinked to find Lam’s hands around his face, yanking him until he stumbled.

“ _The spaceman says everybody look down_ ,” Lam shouted at him.

“It wasn’t his fault,” whispered Sam in Julian’s ear. “I made him do it.”

“ _It’s all in my mind_ ,” Julian answered numbly.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Sam. 

“ _It’s all in my mind_ ,” Julian whispered, and when his eyes opened again, it was Lam with his forehead pressed to Julian's. His cheeks were wet and stained, the fragrance of liquor and the ghost of cheap perfume clinging to them both, a glaze of perspiration and sorrow. Julian’s throat was swollen, like he’d been sobbing for hours.

“By the way, that weed is definitely laced,” said Sam.

Thank god, Julian wept, falling to his knees, slipping on the dew-covered tiles as the sun came up behind them, rising on the bare skin of Calamity Archman’s chest. Oh my god, thank god.

Sam smacked a kiss to his cheek, laughing in his ear. “It’s all in your mind,” she murmured to him, waving her pageant wave as she twirled her way to the edge of the unsteady roof, eyes closing when she reached the precipice.

“Wait,” said Julian, wrenching away from Lam. “Wait, Sam, don’t—!”

But she had already fallen.

She was already gone, the page of lyrics clinging to the place where she had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs: _Change Your Mind_ (Em), _Read My Mind_ (Lam), _Spaceman_ (Julian and Lam). I’ve added the songs I've used so far to a playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7nwj0IQ7FKL7RlkiYOG1fn?si=2ctphBSyQl6W_whGx0LAXA
> 
> FYI, I’m writing this as I would any other fanfic—aka, without an outline or really any advanced plotting—so thanks for following along! I appreciate your willingness to join me on whatever this is. Also, if you haven’t listened to the new Killers album yet, I will most likely use the following songs: _My Own Soul’s Warning, Dying Breed, When the Dreams Run Dry,_ and _Imploding the Mirage._


	5. A Fool to the Bitter End

How exactly does one continue living as the mother of a monster? These are the things they don’t warn you about in sex ed, Destiny Kinney thought as she wiped a sludge of mascara from the increasingly furrowed corner of her nearly middle-aged eyes. While she preferred her stay-all-day liner to be as immovable as cement, she’d hoped her fate might be different. She shouldn’t still be here, not in this same flat, not still in this godforsaken town, where people still looked at her and saw nothing. But this is what they don’t tell you about motherhood. No matter how you try, some kids are just born poisoned. And some mumbo-jumbo biological programming means you love them all the same, down to your fucking bones.

For what it was worth, Destiny had been strangely excited when she’d first found out she was pregnant. Sure, not every teen dancer with dreams of stardom could deal with the thrill of knowing she’ll soon get slow and fat and probably fired from her off-the-strip, almost-not-stripping burlesque show (though that fucking bitch Rosé didn’t have to throw her under the bus just because _she_ was too coked out to lift her chunky-ass leg over her goddamn head anymore) but honestly, Destiny was prematurely tired and preternaturally lonely—like, basically since birth. By the time she squatted down in the club bathroom to pee on a stick, she’d already been passing for eighteen for… six years? Eventually deciding it wasn’t really even advantageous to age beyond that? So yeah, you can do the math from there about how she’d made her living since she’d left her drugged-out mother and the loser you might call Destiny’s temporary stepdad if either of them had ever been sober enough to get a marriage certificate. Put simply, there hadn’t been too many heirlooms to pack on her way out the door.

She’d really thought she was in love, to be honest. That was embarrassing to admit now, probably even more so than anything else. And worse, she’d been sure he’d loved her, Adam, though after she thought about it—after his phone number had been disconnected and a cursory search revealed he had a wife and two young kids back home in some beach house on the coast—that probably wasn’t even his real name, so believing the whole “I’ve never felt like this before” thing was definitely on her. She’d heard the stories from the other girls, but Destiny figured she was _wisened_ by then, you know? Smart the way mistreated kids were smart—like, jaded and shit. Not likely to fall for some line. And definitely not like those other bitches (her mother) who were dumb enough to mourn some asshat long after they were gone. But the fucking truth is it’s hard not to fall in love with a man who treats you nicely; even harder to tell yourself he’s lying when he’s looking you straight in the eye, which nobody else ever did. Later, Destiny would learn what it looked like right before a man disappeared on her; it was easily mistaken for something beautiful, probably because for him, it was. After all, he was the one getting away with it. He’d wash off her perfume and her eagerness to please him just in time to return home to his dumb, prissy wife.

So when Destiny found out there was another heart beating inside her, there was a moment of immense, belly-aching relief, like when you find out the landlord’s gonna let your rent check slide this month (but not for free) or when a guy finally gets drunk enough to slip you bigger bills by accident (but not for free). She’d been considering porn for a while (considered herself a predictor of trends and hey, some of that online shit was really taking off, she may not have finished high school but she wasn’t an idiot, streaming content for ad revenue was definitely a way better option than some creepy director who “tested the merchandise” in advance) but now that was probably out of the question. 

Babies. You had to do right by them somehow.

When Samara came out looking like she did, Destiny was overcome with relief. No ethnic prices for her daughter’s bikini waxes, no slowed-down loud-talking because she probably didn’t even speak English anyway. No “discounted” rates, no getting handed off to the ones who liked “exotic” or “urban” types, no being cast as the victim in their fucked up misogynistic fantasies. Not that her daughter was going to have the same life she did—no way, no how—but it was hard not to imagine how lucky Sam already was, or how the best thing Destiny could have done for her was fuck with a white dude. Stupidly, Destiny thought maybe Sam might grow up to be a little grateful.

Money was hard with a baby, especially a colicky little shit like Sam, so when Destiny met Frank—he worked security at the gig she swore she’d never go back to but, hey, there was only so much the landlord would forgive until he remembered he could get hand jobs at literally any seedy alley down the block for significantly less than three months of late rent—she locked that down quick. Poor guy, he really was sweet, actually wanted to “do right” by her when the test came up positive (because she wasn’t an idiot, men didn’t stay unless there was some type of obligation involved). He was nice, never laid a hand on her, and he really thought she could “change,” whatever that meant—as if her _dream_ had been to service disgusting men under the pretense of being a masseuse. As if needing to support your family, which by necessity now included another kid she could easily have done without, was something she could “change.” 

So anyway, Frank was out within a few rough years of ego-stroking and man-babying that Destiny really didn’t need at the end of a day, having already done the exact same thing at work. Which wasn’t the point, because Frank Kinney wasn’t her soulmate or anything, if such a thing even existed. Well, not the kind in storybooks and songs, anyway. Though for a minute she'd thought maybe it was her daughter.

Sam was a tough baby. She kept Destiny up all night with her screams, she was constantly sick or squirming, and for a solid few months, Destiny could not remember the last time she’d slept on purpose rather than nodding off over her breast pump or a pile of dirty laundry. Her life, for a time, was body glitter and spit-up interchangeably wrecking her clothes, which weren’t exactly Balenciaga to begin with. But then after Julian was born it was like he'd calmed Sam, somehow, or like his quieter presence was enough to make Sam finally stop screaming and focus on something, anything else. When she was a year old, Sam decided Julian was _her_ baby, which was all well and good as far as Destiny was concerned. 

By then, Sam was already growing some features out of all that infantile smushness. Strange to say it, because she was a baby and all, but Sam was really beautiful, even then. By the time Sam was three she looked like a living doll, and Destiny realized that her daughter would have something she’d never had—Sam was going to be really fucking pretty. The kind of pretty that made men do crazy things (not just stupid ones). The kind of pretty that could make money just by existing in the world for people to look at, like something in a museum or a billboard or a poster for some Hollywood film. This girl could go anywhere! Do anything! Be anyone! Nothing would stop her, and especially not Destiny, who’d been called a tramp and a whore often enough to know that nobody would ever take Sam seriously unless she changed paths. And here it was, the perfect new thing to focus her energy on. She would make her daughter a star, and maybe it’d be hell for her along the way, but it would be worth it. Someday, it would all be worth it.

Did Destiny have suspicions about Sam? Yes, of course. She knew her daughter was manipulative, but figured that would only serve her well in a world that didn’t care for women who knew their own minds. She knew Sam was… Well, for lack of a better word, creepy. Sometimes when Destiny looked at Sam, contemplating her while she was playing with her old discarded lipstick tubes or pretending to read a book or something, Sam would look up and meet her eye, and Destiny would shiver with the sense that her daughter knew something she didn’t. Sam was always singing to herself, nonsense words like all children did, but something strange came over Destiny whenever she did so. She saw things, like fuzzy little pictures. She saw… 

It sounded crazy, but something about Sam made Destiny think of death.

Destiny hadn’t really even known much death firsthand, but she’d seen plenty of it in the living. A girl had overdosed, one of her roommates when she’d first come to Vegas, and her doom had been obvious long before then; those empty eyes, her slurring words. She was already half a zombie when Destiny met her. There’d been a few of those in the trailer park, too, and Destiny had gotten the call about her own mother when Sam was four and Julian three, which explained all the dreams she’d been having where Ma was haunting her, chasing her down like a vampire, blood frothing out between her teeth. Sometimes, when Sam looked at Destiny, she saw death, though it was a different kind. Less supernatural, more… barren. Empty and alone, like the desert itself. 

So she pushed Sam too hard. So what? Sam was lucky to have a mother who gave a damn, who pushed literally at all, when Destiny’s mother had been happy to turn a blind eye to the way her boyfriends looked at her daughter—whatever meant she could keep injecting her blood with poison, nonstop. The day Destiny caught her own two kids on drugs she flew off the handle, she could admit that now, which was exactly the wrong reaction to have, because it just meant Sam chased it more, chased it harder. And Julian, fucking Julian. After Sam left, Destiny just didn’t know what to say to him anymore. She didn’t say a word to him, honestly, for at least the first month after Sam was gone. How could she bring herself to tell her pathetic son that in the end his hero was just another junkie whore, like everyone Destiny had ever known?

It was Julian who was more like Destiny in the end, and she felt for him, she did. Sam might have pulled her same disappearing act and chosen god knows what kind of debauchery over a clean home and a family who gave a damn, but at least when Destiny got out of dodge, it had been to escape something. She’d cut ties, the end. Whatever Sam had left behind, she never cut herself off from it. She kept that ghost alive.

“Destiny,” said her recalcitrant daughter, the little bitch who couldn’t even call her Mom after so many months without contact. “Don't worry, I’m safe.”

Destiny had never said a word when Sam had strategically chosen to break down in public, letting everyone—including her wide-eyed idiot brother—believe that Destiny was the one forcing her into this. As if Sam would ever settle for not being the center of attention. Yeah, sure, Sam had wanted a _normal life_ and Destiny had twisted her arm, that’s what happened. Put a pair of Disney Princess eyes on a girl with Sam’s looks and suddenly it’s easy to believe every word out of her lying little mouth.

“Good luck staying safe,” Destiny had replied on the phone, and hung up. She didn’t mention it to Julian because literally anyone could see he was fragile, easily broken. Loneliness did that to a person. Destiny would know.

It was her fault, really, because she’d given her two children each other, a tiny alliance she’d never been lucky enough to have, and now because of her they were two halves of the same incomprehensible, parasitic unit. Julian had never known life without Sam to tell him how to view it; he looked at Destiny like she was the enemy, just like Sam had done. Whatever Destiny could have done to comfort him, to reach for him, it wouldn’t have been enough. Now she just looked at him and felt sick over it, this child she’d never really cared for because he was never really hers. He hated her, and worse, she hated him. They don’t tell you to watch out for that because it’s not just immoral, it’s inhuman; that same biology mumbo-jumbo dictates that what’s truly evil isn’t the ungrateful daughter, but the mother who can’t stand her own child. Who can’t even look at him because he looks too much like her own bad choices, her own anger and desperation and remorse. All the things she can’t bear to face; all those things that she had done. She didn’t like Sam, but loved her anyway. The real ugliness, the actual fucked-uppery of it all, was how she hated Julian. Poor thing.

Maybe the truth was that Destiny wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Maybe she just had some kind of mutation in her veins. She came from something corrupted, so everything that came from her was, too. When “How did you know you were pregnant?” came out of Sam’s mouth during one of her diabolical monthly calls, Destiny threw her phone against the wall, her mouth filling instantly with bile. She knew those calls were meant to punish her, but only then did she understand how much.

She hadn’t prayed since she was a child, but she thought then: Please don’t let anything else with pieces of me grow up to cause any more damage. She only made monsters. Sam with her death and Julian with his sickness—whatever nonsense the liberals were calling headcases these days, as if Destiny hadn’t already guessed there was a screw loose somewhere in her son. She didn’t have a drop of goodness to pass down and to her credit, which nobody ever gave her, she knew it. It was one of the first things she asked the police officer, the one who called her with the results of Sam’s autopsy. “Was Sam pregnant? Did she have a baby?”

“No,” the detective said, sounding confused. “Have you spoken to someone else on the case about this?”

“No. What does that mean?”

“Oh, it’s just…” The detective hesitated. “We had reason to think, for a time, that maybe… but no, the autopsy is conclusive. Your daughter wasn’t pregnant at the time of her death.”

How wonderful, Destiny thought angrily. How very magnificent for her.

The real shock had been finding out where Sam had been. In Destiny’s mind, her daughter was always somewhere seedy, New York City or more likely Los Angeles, turning tricks or maybe trying to make it as a pop star, telling her sob story of how she'd escaped her controlling, narcissistic mother. “Why am I never good enough for you?” Sam would sob in front of the other competitors, just to humiliate her. In front of the professional pageant directors and the girls who could pay for entire teams of stylists and coaches—and here Destiny was, cobbling Sam’s costumes together by hand in the dead of night and choreographing her dances and teaching her Shakespeare or whatever the fuck (okay fine, she might have neglected a few state standards). As if Destiny hadn’t slaved away for her daughter until every drop of beauty she’d ever had was wrung out of her and deposited in Sam, whose tearful sorrow never quite managed to reach her eyes. 

Even Sam’s death seemed like it had been designed specifically to punish Destiny. Did Samara have any reason to take her own life, was she depressed, these things can sometimes be genetic and after all, you do have one institutionalized child, you’re the mother, you must somehow be at fault— _that_ Freudian bullshit. Was it really so hard to believe Sam had made enemies of her own without Destiny’s help? “Everyone at the conservatory loved her, Mrs. Kinney”—bullshit they did. _All_ of them? No. Impossible. Someone who’d been bullied into saying nothing, yes. How could that snotty professor look her in the eye and say that when Destiny had been Sam’s mother and first victim? When no one would know better than she would what kind of person her daughter really was? Sam had always had those bedroom eyes, that siren smile; she never got a no if the answer she wanted was yes. A million bucks and Destiny’s left leg (her favorite) said Sam’s death was on the conscience (or lack thereof) of some horny fucking idiot who hadn’t been careful enough to know better when he put his prick (and his fate) in Sam’s hands.

The police had already closed the case, settling on an accident. Ha! Sam didn’t have accidents. She was too careful, too in control of herself, too meticulous with her twisted forms of wrath. She’d probably gone for someone powerful, someone with too much to lose, and whoever they were, that person was responsible for this. Take her own life? No, out of the question. Someone had killed Sam and now that was Destiny’s burden to carry, because in her aching, tired heart, she felt both utter despondency and paralyzing relief.

“Hi Mom,” Sam said on her last phone call. “I think I might leave here soon.”

She’d probably overstayed her welcome. Someone must have finally sorted her out, because she’d certainly been perfectly happy to rub her newfound happiness (you know, the thing she apparently hadn’t had while her mother slaved to put food on the table) in Destiny’s face up until then.

“Yeah? And go where?”

“Well.” Sam gave one of her teen-anarchist snorts in response. “If you won’t take me, Jules will.”

“He’s in the hospital, he’s sick. Where do you think he’s going to go?”

“It’s not a hospital, Destiny, it’s a treatment center,” was Sam’s typically condescending reply. “And I know you’ve spent his entire life ignoring him, but you do realize he’s the only kid you’ve got left, right? You could at least be there for him if you’re not going to be there for me.”

Great. Wonderful. Always the mother’s fault. “Just tell me, what’s your brilliant escape plan now, hm? How are you going to run away this time, Samara? I’m guessing there’s no one to help you anymore or you wouldn’t be turning to Julian, much less me,” Destiny said irritably, fighting a mirthless laugh. “He won’t go with you now, not anymore. You left him alone too long. He doesn’t believe in you anymore, you’re just a ghost.”

There was silence on the other end. “It was too hard,” Sam whispered. 

She was playing the martyr again. Julian would believe her. 

Destiny didn’t.

“Just let him live for once,” Destiny said. “If you love him. If you even know what love is,” she added bitterly.

“Ouch,” replied Sam in a dry tone, which was far more like her. “Cutting, Mother, especially coming from you. Where do you think I would have possibly learned to love?”

You don’t learn it, Destiny thought. It plagues you. It follows you around even after your daughter is gone. Even after you put her in the ground and a piece of you goes with her.

“You know what the end is for you, right?” Sam had said, her little parting bit of nastiness. “You’re alone in the goddamn desert. Just you,” she spat. “And your long, long life of absolutely nothing at all.”

Her last words from her daughter, the only person Destiny Kinney had ever dared to love.

She stared at herself again in the mirror, lines of exhaustion unmistakable now that she’d wiped her makeup clean. She didn’t have to get dolled up anymore—nothing about her body reminded anyone of sex now that she’d aged out of that particular stage of femininity—and while she’d wanted to be a pageant coach for a bit, make some money off her years of expertise, nobody would touch her now. Not after what happened with Sam. Now Destiny worked all day on her feet, which she would do every day for the rest of her life until her body finally took mercy on her and gave up. 

So. How does one keep living as the mother of a monster?

Destiny blinked at her reflection and then rose to her feet, turning to her bed.

One miserable fucking day at a time.

* * *

Although Julian had not expected to blow anyone’s socks off by any means (certainly not with a song he had written while extremely, problematically high from something that had taken all of Sunday to sleep off), he _had_ hoped to achieve some sort of meager detente with Professor Iver—something a la “okay fine, you can disappear quietly into the background now that you’ve completed the insane task that I’ve irrationally demanded,” which by any metric seemed reasonable to expect. After all, the whole point of this seemed to be that Julian wasn’t ready or deserving, blah blah blah, even though he coincidentally happened to summon the ghost of his dead sister pretty much every time he sang, which was basically inarguable. 

The point was that Julian had successfully written a song, goddamn it, and considering Iver knew perfectly well that he didn’t know a fucking thing about songwriting, this should have been a colossally impressive undertaking for a good teacher, or at least a pretty cool day for a middling one. 

“It’s meaningless,” said Iver, who was neither.

“I… disagree,” said Julian, since he was the one who had written it and happened to know it had immense amounts of meaning, even if yes, there had been some drugs involved. (Against his will! Not entirely, but kind of. That wasn’t the point.) “I mean, if you want to talk more in detail about the lyrics, that’s probably not a good use of class time, but—”

“You’ve taken enough of our time as it is, Mr. Kinney,” said Iver, which was, again, absolute horseshit, particularly since it hadn’t been Julian’s idea to devote the last week (and then some) to slowly losing what remained of his mind over this assignment. “Let’s get back to dissonant chords.”

“Cool,” muttered Julian, “cool, cool, cool,” before sitting down to continue being as unobtrusive as possible while still breathing Iver’s air. 

It was beginning to feel mild-to-moderately unlikely that any of this was about Julian himself. Under almost all circumstances, Julian’s biggest social crime was having no personality at all, as opposed to possessing any unpleasant, controversial, or otherwise sharp edges that might have set Iver against him. Also, Iver had met Calamity Archman, hadn’t he? And Em Wilder, and Catastrophe as well, if rumors about her personality were to be believed. (Julian doubted them.) Julian wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, but there had to be something else there. Was it some sort of administrative bullying, like the clash between Thurston and Archman? Did Iver simply resent Julian being placed at his precious school of musical prodigies? Was it because Julian was Nevada trash/had no money/barely scraped out a GED (Destiny was surprisingly good with math but absolute shit at chemistry) or wait, was it racism? Fuck, if it was _racism_ —Okay but no, better to assume it wasn’t, because that reeeeally wasn’t fixable, not without massive institutional overhaul and an unlikely collective agreement that color definitely did exist (you made it real bitches, you can’t take it back now!) and biases were alive and well, but anyway the point was that wasn’t it, it couldn’t be.

So was it… Sam?

She had appeared again, as she always did, and this time, as with last time, when she stared at Iver he’d refused to meet her eye. Was this because Iver really believed she was nothing more than a hologram? Did he simply not think she was real? Or was there some other reason he couldn’t stand to look at her while she seemed to do nothing else but stare at him?

“Was there any sort of problem between Sam and Iver?” Julian asked Reid, who was becoming something of a safely reliable presence. It made a lot of sense to Julian that Reid was always sandwiched between people, either Olympia and Cat or Graves and Skit or Em and anyone else, who were all friends but in a sort of unstable way that might contain landmines. Currently, Reid was sitting between Em and Julian, though to Julian’s immense surprise it was Em who answered his question. 

“Iver’s got a complex,” Em said, and did not elaborate.

“What kind of complex?” Julian slightly resented having to ask.

“It’s not a complex,” Reid assured him, nudging Em. “It’s just one of Em’s vendettas. Iver gave them an A- on an assignment last year—”

“It isn’t personal, it’s a fact,” Em interrupted. “Iver’s young, he hasn’t been out of school long, and he’s homegrown, like the Archmans. He’s got a chip on his shoulder.”

“Who does?” came from behind them, and Julian and Reid both turned. 

Em, of course, continued eating, except to answer, “Iver.”

“Oh.” Cat tucked a loose flutter of hair behind her ear, coming around to take the seat across from them. (The more reasonable position, which one of the other three of them should have taken, really.) Today she wore a messy ponytail, violent shadows beneath her unmade eyes, a thousand necklaces that jangled when she sat. Her dark roots were beginning to show beneath her platinum hair, which was somehow a little beguiling. “What happened?”

She was looking directly at Julian, who cleared his throat. “Oh, just… Iver. He’s got a problem with me.” He was surprised she hadn’t already realized that, though Iver’s responsibility as ensemble advisor was not yet in full swing. So far, only Archman had them working within their groups, if you could call it that. (Lam and Graves walking out was not exactly a lesson in anything, minus the as yet indecipherable rift.)

“I’m sure it’s not what you think,” Cat said, peeling back the silver foil on a strawberry yogurt cup and dipping into it with a shiny plastic spoon. “Maybe he just thinks you need a little extra push or something.”

Em snorted their profound disagreement, to which Julian hid a smile. Sometimes Em’s misanthropy was cathartic, if only to experience by proxy.

“Julian was asking if it had something to do with Sam,” Reid clarified to Cat, “but I was just about to tell him that I can’t remember Iver ever paying Sam any special attention, good or bad.”

“Are you sure?” Cat frowned, bringing the spoonful of yogurt to her mouth. “I feel like I saw them arguing once.”

That checked out. Julian couldn’t imagine Sam liking Iver—she rarely made a point to be nice to people who didn’t earn her respect, and Iver didn’t seem to like people who didn’t carefully revere him simply for his position of authority. All in all, an argument would be more expected than not.

“I’m sure it’s nothing serious,” Cat assured Julian. “Iver’s just… threatened by you, probably.”

“But why would he be threatened by me specifically?” Julian asked, and Cat turned the full force of her smile on him, nudging his knee beneath the table with her own.

“Only all the obvious reasons,” she said, bringing her spoon to her mouth again and licking it clean before Graves arrived, kissing the top of her head and promptly changing the subject before Julian could find out what these so-called obvious reasons were.

Julian hoped maybe Iver would do something outlandish during their weekly third year advisory meeting, just to confirm he wasn’t crazy or imagining things, but it seemed he was only a threat when it came to first year theory.

Figures, Julian thought, glancing at Cat’s serene profile.

Even the meagerest thing Iver could do for him was pretty much out of the question.

* * *

Julian had thought that perhaps the evening spent with his mercurial roommate would alter the course of their relationship in some way, but of course it did not. Lam continued to be absent for enduring stretches of time, and did not intimate camaraderie in any way during the course of their daily schedules. Since that Saturday night at the dive bar in town, Julian had begun to wonder how much of it had actually happened and how much had been tainted or otherwise influenced by his subsequent abuse of hallucinatory substances. For example, had Lam actually sought him out at the pharmacy, or had Julian simply returned of his own accord? Everything about the evening seemed to have been Lam’s idea, but hadn’t Julian been the one behind the wheel? Had they been friends for a micro-instant or hadn’t they, and had he imagined what Lam had done—the trick with the lighter—or was that somehow uncannily real?

Add it to the list of mysteries, Julian supposed dismissively.

The weather was cooling down by then, the aftermath of heat waves creeping into some semblance of autumn, which Julian had never truly experienced before. Where he came from, everything was only barely alive, so there was never much ceremony about changing leaves and gradual decay. It was beautiful, truth be told, the way the life cycle of seasons seemed to illuminate the landscape, filling the air with a newfound, glorious crispness. The crunch of leaves beneath his feet! The unmistakable smell of petrichor! A poet’s veritable daydream, had Julian still been one of those.

“Figured I’d find you here,” said Graves, settling down beside Julian where he sat at the edge of campus, staring over the gorges again. “You’d be very easy to murder,” he remarked, nudging him to punctuate the joke.

“One of my many attributes,” Julian assured him, and Graves’ mouth quirked.

Despite having nearly all their classes together, they hadn’t spoken much in recent days, largely because something seemed to have divided the group as a whole. Julian rarely saw everyone in the same place at the same time, which Olympia had written off as a result of their coursework intensifying. “Ha,” had been Skit’s response to that, proving it false to some degree, though Julian wasn’t terribly fussed. As an outsider, he was finding himself more comfortable with the smaller fractions of their collective. If Sam had been the sort of person to bring people together, he was obviously the opposite—divisive enough that people found reason not to be themselves around him if they could help it.

“You know we’re going to have to figure out a way to write something together eventually,” Julian said, wondering if Graves had planned to bring up the fact that their ensemble had yet to accomplish… Well, anything.

Graves passed him a sidelong look of amusement, so evidently not. “How very achieving of you,” he commented blithely.

“Am I supposed to not care?” Julian asked, feeling it a bit unfair that he would be admonished for not wanting to gamble his precarious position at Dives over some feud with a barely-functioning lunatic. “This is an opportunity for me, you know.”

“I know.”

“One I wouldn’t have if not for Sam.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t really plan to waste it.”

“I understand.”

“So then what’s the problem?” Julian asked irreverently. “So you and Lam don’t get along. So what? Isn’t that the foundation for half the music in the seventies?”

Graves cracked a smile, reaching up to massage the base of his neck. “I wouldn’t necessarily diminish our circumstances to ‘not getting along,’ but the wake-up call is noted.”

“Why do you hate him so much?” Julian attempted.

“Aside from the obvious?” Graves countered unhelpfully.

Julian remained silent, which was ostensibly clear as a yes. Graves slowly leaned back until he was staring up at the canopy of color above them, arms folded to rest beneath his head.

“Cat told me she told you about how we met,” Graves remarked.

“Sort of,” Julian said, hedging a bit. “She didn’t explain much.” Or anything, aside from painting a very queasy picture about what Lam may or may not have been responsible for.

“I was, uh. Not in a good place at the time,” Graves admitted. “I don’t come from a very… wholesome family.”

“Wonder what that would be like,” said Julian drily.

Graves smothered a laugh, closing his eyes.

“You know, I like you,” he commented, apropos of nothing. “You’re kind of—”

“Calming?” Julian guessed, having heard that enough by then.

“More like resigned.” Graves cracked one eye. “For the record, it’s not as dramatic a story as it’ll sound.”

“Try me.” 

“Well, I was thirteen, avoiding my father for what I didn’t realize would be the last time. Some tourists had left a boat out down there.” He waved a hand toward one of the docks dotting the shallow shores of the lake below. “I got in it and rowed out onto the lake, but uh.” He scratched beneath the knot of his hair. “I don’t exactly know how to swim.”

“You grew up on a lake and you don’t know how to swim?” Julian said.

“Well, it was just kind of background noise. For the tourists and the summer people, plus I wasn’t allowed out much. Anyway, the twins must have seen me in the water—”

“Wait,” Julian interrupted. “You were in a boat, weren’t you?”

Graves was looking elsewhere, at nothing. “I got out of the boat.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t remember.” _Lie_ , thought Julian, though he said nothing. “Anyway, the twins saw me and Lam went in after me, pulled me out. He did something… weird,” Graves said, grimacing. “To this day I’m not sure what I actually saw. Sometimes I think it might have been a hallucination.”

Relatable. “And then?”

“And then my dad died,” Graves said. “Which might have nothing to do with the story—”

“ _Might_?” echoed Julian. 

“—but chronologically I guess it’s significant. My mom was always flitting in and out—she and my dad were kind of on and off—and then after he died, she was gone for months at a time. The twins convinced their father to take me on as an apprentice, basically. Kept me out of the system. Lam snuck me in at night when my mom was gone,” he said, tilting his head. “Until I started here, I practically lived with the Archmans.”

“None of this is a reason to hate Lam,” Julian pointed out.

“I didn’t hate him,” Graves said. “He’s the one who hates me.”

“Doesn’t seem that way.”

“Well.” Graves rubbed at the crease between his brows. “It was a long process. First there was Cat,” he explained. “She’s… she kind of monopolizes your thoughts. Hard to explain.”

Not really, thought Julian. 

“Then Sam,” Graves added, quieter. “She loved Lam, I mean really loved him.”

“I hear that a lot,” said Julian, thinking they all had some version of that story, but Graves shook his head.

“No, not like this. When she was around Lam, he was different. She loved him _into_ something, not like… not like loves that cost you something, or take something from you.” Graves did not elaborate which of his own loves he was referring to. “And Lam loved her back like no one else,” he admitted.

“Were they… together?” Julian finally asked. It had taken some time for him to finally bring it up to someone, though the answer was somewhat unsatisfying.

“I really don’t know,” Graves said. “They were inseparable, I know that. Lam was almost always with her. But it never really seemed—” He broke off. “It was a little like Sam idolized him,” he said uncertainly.

“No way.” Julian shook his head. “She didn’t have that kind of programming.” Sam didn’t have heroes. She was her own hero. She’d never met an authority figure she didn’t love cutting down at the knees—which, again, was almost certainly part of Iver’s problem.

“No, believe me, I know, it doesn’t make sense even now. But she was careful with him, more careful than with the rest of us. Like she was… preserving him.” Graves shook his head. “I know I’m not making sense and I can’t explain it. It was just… I don’t know. Like she was trying not to ruin him.”

He reached out, blindly plucking at some grass. 

“You blame him,” Julian said.

The look Graves gave him was assurance enough that neither of them had forgotten the day he banged down Julian’s door, looking for Lam. _We both know this is your fault!_

“They fought the day she died,” Graves said. 

“About you?” Julian guessed.

“Yeah,” said Graves.

He turned his head away again, staring at the pathway of a falling leaf.

“Some people are just… you just can’t say no,” said Graves. “You wake up certain you’re one thing, and then just being near them unravels you. And then you’re not that thing anymore.”

It occurred to Julian that Graves had said something before about there being different kinds of bards. There had been one in particular he’d mentioned, hadn’t there?

Sirens.

It would make perfect sense if that was what Sam had been. Nobody had ever turned her down, no one ever refused her. People became wild versions of themselves around her, slavish in their devotion. It would be no surprise if she had that effect on everyone here, though you’d think they’d know to put wax in their ears by now or something.

As usual, Julian had the odd sense of déjà vu around Graves, like he was reliving a moment from sometime before, only he’d never been here before—that he knew for certain. Everything about the time he spent on Dives’ campus was foreign and new, from the lessons that filled his days down to the weather, the colors, the sounds of the birds in the trees. But at the moment, he couldn’t stop thinking he had felt this, once. This same sluggishness of time, the way it moved so slowly, like floating atop the neighboring complex’s swimming pool that he and Sam had broken into one particularly sleepless July. That same feeling in Julian’s chest, like he’d be glad to take things as they came, because never again would he ever be this old, this boundless with patience. Like he’d never be this infinitely young.

“He did something to the water,” Graves said abruptly, cutting into Julian’s thoughts, and Julian startled back to the conversation. “That day. The day I met him. I can’t remember it exactly, I can’t explain it, but I know he did. Whatever it is, he doesn’t do it in class because he knows how fucked it is. There’s such a thing as too much,” Graves suddenly erupted, sitting upright. “Even for us, there’s normal and there’s abnormal and then there’s bad, like, really bad, way too much. And Catastrophe, she won’t say anything against him, but I know she knows.”

Graves launched to his feet, striding up to the edge of the campus cliffs and staring down, as Lam had done. 

_The spaceman says everybody look down._

“He’s not a prodigy. _I’m_ a prodigy,” Graves said, a glimpse of arrogance that mixed with insecurity, with fear. “He’s something else. But sure,” he added, turning caustically over his shoulder to address Julian. “Yeah, let’s get right to work on our song.”

When Graves strode away, agitated, Julian let him go. Graves would recover, probably apologize, which Julian would readily accept; no harm done. There was something very skittish about Graves Nero, something fragile and translucently false. Sam would have loved that, or hated it. Or both. 

After a few minutes Julian rose grudgingly to his feet, the solemnity of the evening air having lost its anchoring quality by then. He had papers to write, and ever since finishing the song with Lam, rhymes had been gradually occurring to him, albeit nothing especially good, much less intelligible. He took himself for a walk back to the dorms the long way, rounding the campus as the final remaining students trickled out from evening meetings and late rehearsals. 

He paused when he caught a familiar glint rounding the corner of the Highlands, drawn unintentionally into Cat Archman’s path once again. From where he remained safely out of sight, he could see the switch of her platinum ponytail, shifting as she argued with someone. 

“—not okay, Andrew, and unless you want me to tell Professor Archman—”

“I really don’t think it’s any of your business, Catastrophe,” said—much to Julian’s disbelief—Iver’s voice. “I’m not your father’s TA anymore. I’m a professor in my own right, and how I choose to handle my classroom is none of your concern.”

“You’re being an idiot,” Cat said irritably. “Do you really think he won’t put two and two together? You’re going to detonate your own career, and then whose fault will that be?”

“Career?” Iver echoed with a mirthless laugh. “That’s what you think this is?”

“Oh, fuck off. It’s not my father’s fault you couldn’t make it anywhere else. Just lay off Julian,” Cat snapped, as the Julian in question blinked with surprise. “If you won’t do it just for the sake of not being an unreasonable asshat, then do it because you’re only shooting yourself in the foot. And honestly, forget my father—if Julian says a word to _Thurston_ —”

“About what, exactly? The fact that I don’t coddle him?” Iver scoffed. “Unlike the rest of this school, I do not see the point in treating his presence like some kind of holy resurrection.”

“You need to stop singling him out,” Cat said impatiently. “Stop tormenting him for your own amusement—”

“My amusement?”

“Sam is _gone_ , Andrew. She’s gone.” Cat’s voice faltered. “You have to treat him like every other student, because he is.”

“And is this you treating me like any other professor?” countered Iver.

 _Iver has a complex_ , Em commented in Julian’s head.

Yeah, no shit, Julian now agreed.

“I am not yours to play with,” Iver continued to Cat’s silence. “Nor was I ever hers. So can we be done here?”

“Yes,” said Cat coldly, at which point it occurred to Julian that the very last thing he wanted was to be caught eavesdropping at that particular moment.

So, with a herculean amount of effort, he tore himself away, backtracking on his path with his sister’s uncertain legacy trailing elusively behind him.

* * *

The next time Archman left them to their ensembles, Lam was nowhere to be found. This, Julian could tell, had somehow angered Graves even more than Lam’s unwanted presence.

“He’s being a child,” Graves muttered. “We’ll all fail the year for this.”

“Weren’t you the one who said you’d rather fail than work with him?” Cat retorted. Even to Julian, who knew her least, her voice seemed sharper than usual, like she was reusing that particular tone from the vestiges of an unfinished fight.

“Not helpful,” said Graves.

He jiggled his knee and tossed open his composition book.

“Any ideas?” he snapped. 

“A nap,” suggested Cat under her breath.

“Okay, great.” Graves slammed the notebook shut again. “Why don’t we just work independently and choose the best song at the end of term?”

“Oh sure, Professor Archman will love that,” Cat muttered.

“Daddy can fucking deal,” snarled Graves, before instantly softening. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I just—”

“Just go,” said Cat.

Graves swept his things from the desk in a single prowling motion, pausing to look at Julian.

“I think it could work,” Julian attempted.

“Oh, it won’t,” Graves assured him bracingly, tossing his bag over his shoulder and exiting the room.

“Well.” Today Cat was wearing a pair of oversized glasses, which she nudged up her nose with an expression of disapproval. “Yet another admirable display from the two most pigheaded men in my life, one of which can’t even be bothered to actually make an appearance in it.” She rose to her feet, glancing down at where Julian remained. “Want to go for a walk or something?”

“Me? Oh uh, yeah. Sure.” Julian coughed and rose to his feet, glancing perhaps too lingeringly at his notebook, because Cat laughed. 

“We can work,” she assured him. “There’s no reason the two of us can’t work together, is there?”

If she was tempting him into saying something, he narrowly managed not to.

“All my vendettas can wait,” Julian promised her, and Cat’s face wrenched into a smile as they took the stairs out of the basement, Skit’s eyes noticeably following as they went. 

“So,” Cat said as they traversed the grassy knoll, “how does it feel to have a month at Dives under your belt?”

“Mm, incalculably different from anything before,” said Julian definitively. “How does it feel to have a month at Dives without my sister?” 

“Incalculably different from anything before.” Cat shuffled her feet in the grass, staring mournfully down at her worn black high-tops. “Not always a bad thing,” she said, giving him an unnecessary look of reassurance. “But I can’t say I’m enjoying the adjustment.”

“I was actually hoping we could write about her,” Julian admitted, and Cat looked up, surprised. “I mean, since she’s something we all have in common,” he hurried to clarify, “I just thought—”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Cat observed aloud, lifting her chin to speculate into brisker air. (Small mercies, Julian thought.) “Did you have something in mind?”

Yes, actually. One of the few useful thoughts he’d managed recently. “I was thinking, you know, we could do sort of an allegory about summer love—young love,” Julian said. “How it ends and you just want to hang onto more than just the memory of it, even though that’s all you get. Missing someone,” he explained, “when all you’ll ever have is… I don’t know, pictures. Memorabilia. Just thoughts of them, but never the real them.”

“Don’t want your picture in my cell phone,” Cat said instantly. “I want you here with me.”

“Yes, exactly that,” Julian said, euphoric with the rare sense of being understood, and Cat turned to smile at him.

“I knew I liked you,” she said. “Come on, let’s get it written down.”

* * *

Cat was unilaterally, unnaturally focused, almost inhumanly so, to the point where Julian had to beg her to stop for food. She laughed at him, then tossed him a granola bar from her bag. “Don’t be such a baby,” she said, dazzling him as usual, or perhaps that was purely the lightheadedness from low blood sugar.

“Sing me what we’ve got,” Julian said, flopping over in the grass. Whatever Skit had implied via _you know how Cat gets when she’s writing_ , she’d been correct.

“Mm, verse or chorus?”

“Just start from the beginning.” That might buy him some time. He peeled back the shiny wrapper on the granola bar, astonished that something so insubstantial could seem so deliriously tempting.

“My, my, isn’t someone entitled,” Cat commented wryly as Julian took a messy, crumbly bite.

“Well, you can either sing the song or tell me why you went to war for me with Iver,” he said, which he had fully intended to _not_ say, but hunger had clearly gotten the better of him.

Cat peered at him for a second, unamused.

“You might have told me you were there,” she said eventually. “A bit creepy, isn’t it, to just skulk around without calling attention to yourself?”

“Why bother,” Julian managed over a dry swallow of granola, “when Iver would just use it as an excuse to hate me more?”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Cat said, even though Julian had been right there and essentially heard everything he needed to hear. “He’s just… Well, I don’t know.” She pursed her lips. “I’ve known him for years. He’s not a bad person, he’s just used to being treated badly. You know, underestimated and stuff, even before he started working for my father. Plus he’s always been sort of anti-social.” She crossed something out on the page, then scribbled something in its place. “Kind of a typical easy target, you know? People don’t really understand him.”

“So that’s a reason to become a bully?” Julian said doubtfully.

“Not a good one,” Cat acknowledged, shrugging. “But that’s kind of how it usually goes, isn’t it?”

She looked up, dark eyes deliberately searching. “I’m not apologizing for him,” she clarified. “He’s being a dick.”

“Yes,” Julian agreed, pleased to at least have that admission to tuck under his pillow at night.

“And I… just wanted to make things a little easier for you.”

“Yeah?” For fun, and because she was starving him, he played a little game of how-long-before-we-break-eye-contact. “Why?”

She stared at him. In the fading light, the little crescent moon beside her eye looked even more fitting, and the illustrative jewels along her hairline twinkled like stars.

Then she cleared her throat, glancing down at the page.

“ _Wheels are turning_ ,” she sang softly, “ _I remember when you were mine. Now just to reach you, baby I’d stand in line. But there’s another world we’re living in tonight, and there’s another heart that’s fading in the light_.”

“ _Don’t want your picture in my cell phone_ ,” Julian joined in, crawling over to read from the page in her lap. “ _I want you here with me_.”

“ _Don’t want your memory in my head now_ ,” Cat sang, accenting the line with a little vocal filigree, a sprinkle of her clear soprano when Julian faltered, uncertain whether to alter the second line of the chorus’s melody. “ _I want you here with me_.”

There was a flicker as Sam joined them, lying down in the grass to rest her head beside Julian’s lap.

“ _Spent the summer just laying out in the sun_ ,” Julian sang to her, and she smiled up at him. “ _Time seems to move so slow when you’re taking it as it comes, maybe we were just too young—_ ”

He stopped, having run out of existing lyrics, and Sam flickered out again, epileptic. Cat, however, began speaking in rhymes, crafting lyrics aloud.

“Your body was tanned and your hair was long,” Cat said, “you showed me your smile and my cares were gone.”

“Feeling your love filled my soul with fright,” suggested Julian, and she shook her head.

“Summer love, remember? _Falling in love_ filled my soul with fright—”

“You said come on babe, it’ll be alright,” Julian finished, and Cat smiled approvingly, writing it down. “I must have been a fool to the bitter end,” Julian murmured, leaning his chin on her shoulder as she transcribed for him, “now I hold on to hope to have you back again.”

“I’d bargain and I’d fight,” Cat said wistfully, and Julian glanced at her.

“ _But there’s another world we’re living in tonight_ ,” he sang in a rough voice, leading them back into the chorus.

“ _Don’t want your picture on my cell phone, I want you here with me. Don’t want your memory in my head now, I want you here with me—_ ”

“ _Well I saw you in a restaurant the other day_ ,” Julian said to his sister, who held her chin propped up on the heels of her hand, bare feet swinging in the evening air. “ _And instead of walking towards you, I ran away_.”

He stopped, choking a little bit on remorse, and Cat reached over, taking his hand in hers.

“ _And I’ll keep on waiting for you_ ,” she said, smoothing her thumb over his knuckles, “ _til you come around, come around and say_ —”

It was another lead-in back to the chorus, but Julian couldn’t summon the voice. Sam gave him a look like well, if you must, and then she looked over at Cat, half-smiling that exchange between girlfriends that said I’ll take your secrets to my grave, or maybe well beyond it.

“Do you think it’s really her?” Julian asked, glancing down at Cat’s chipped black polish while she leaned her head against his shoulder. “Like, can she actually see us, or…?”

“No,” Cat said gently, squeezing his hand again. “I don’t think so. That would have to be more than just magic.”

“What’s more than magic?” Julian prompted, half-joking, and Cat shrugged.

“Love,” she said. “Other miracles.”

It was quieter now that the evenings weren’t so hot. The atmosphere was stiller, calmer, and Julian realized there might not be too many more nights like this. Eventually it would snow, wouldn’t it? He’d never known snow, couldn’t picture it now. Once again his imagination failed him, though he had little use for it at the moment. The air was that perfect, breezeless, weatherless sort of quality that allowed time to stop and reality to slide into oblivion. He could feel Catastrophe Archman breathing beside him and he thought maybe, for just a moment, that he might be a person who could someday know peace.

“I should probably apologize to Graves,” sighed Cat.

Oh well, Julian thought. Most precious things were fleeting, anyway. Look at Sam.

“Yeah,” he said, “sure.” He eased himself upright, freeing Cat from the hollow he’d made for her at his side. “Tell him I’m sorry, too.”

“What for?” she asked, looking quizzically at him. 

“I don’t know. I guess just… pushing him, I think. About Lam.”

“God,” scoffed Cat, expression instantly contorting at the mention of her twin. “Lam has a way of poisoning things around him. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

She rose to her feet, glancing over her page of notes one last time as Julian staggered upright beside her, dusting himself of loose blades of grass.

“This is a good song,” Cat said, looking up at him. “Sweet and sad. Sam would’ve loved it.”

No, not really, Julian thought with an inward grimace. She would’ve seen right through it to the weakness underneath. The whole “help me, I need you, I’m cut open and bleeding” of it all would repulse her, the vulnerability she only knew how to misuse, and in her defense, it wasn’t her fault she so loathed it. Destiny had not raised her to lower herself to the base derivations of human emotion.

“Yeah,” he said.

In answer, Cat smiled and reached up, smoothing one hand over his cheek. “I’ll see you,” she said, and then her touch slid away and she was gone.

* * *

Julian wound up managing to get one of the last prepared sandwiches from the dining hall and scarfed it down on the way to his room, pausing at the door to listen for Lam. No movement, no trace of him. He pulled open the door to catch the smell of weed and… patchouli? That was new, but regardless, Lam had unquestionably been there and gone again. Julian leaned out of their window and scoured Lam’s little roof kingdom, but there was nothing. Just a handful of mislaid lighters and a cheap BIC pen.

Satisfied at least that he was alone, Julian threw himself onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, an activity he knew himself to be capable of doing for several hours, particularly in a buzzing state of mind such as this. He contemplated the possibility of masturbation, which was a contemplation occurring with increased frequency these days, though he had yet to indulge it. Maybe it was the idea of walking through this dreamstate of Sam’s alternate life that rendered the atmosphere too pristine, too unsupportive of his repugnant vulgarity. He felt constantly like a thing out of place, a bookmark for when she would return.

He meant what he had written in the song. He would do whatever it took to have her back.

Having dismissed the idea of idly groping himself in the dark, he pulled the journal of Sam’s songs— _For Julian_ —and opened to a new page, closer to the end. He traced his finger over her handwriting, following the paths of her letters. The moon was bright enough from the window that he could see the shadows of the pen strokes in the dark: the places she’d dug in with urgency, the others where she’d swept easily across the page.

 _Can’t hear myself think_ _  
__Through the crashing of the rain_ _  
__I’m passing judgment in the fast lane_ _  
__And smoothing out a rough stone_ _  
__Guess it comes with age_ _  
__You start to wonder about the time theft_ _  
__How much of it you’ve got left_ _  
__Comes in with the age now_

He wondered if she’d been lonely when she wrote that. Unlike some of her earlier work, it seemed… more solitary, somehow. He brushed over the words of the chorus, trying to feel whatever she’d meant to put into the words.

 _But when the dreams run dry_ _  
__I will be where I always was_ _  
__Standing at your side_ _  
__Letting go of the reins_

You could’ve just held on, Julian thought disapprovingly, though he didn’t allow himself too much bitterness. She wouldn’t like that. She’d find it funny, and not in a nice way.

 _Reach for the summit_ _  
__Of an ancient design_ _  
__On the verge of eternal_ _  
__On the heels of divine_

He mumbled the other words aloud, trying to find the melody she’d intended, though it was less finished than some of her earlier songs.

 _If you stumble and fall_ _  
__If the way can’t be found_ _  
__We’ll just follow the moon, to the stars_ _  
__To the sun, to the ground_ _  
__And around and around_ _  
__And around_

“Hi,” Sam mouthed, the spark of her perched at the edge of his bed. He lifted a hand to wave back, but kept singing.

 _In the light, in the heat_ _  
__Through the folds and the bends_ _  
__And again and again_ _  
__And again_

“You could have taken a moment to explain yourself,” Julian murmured in frustration, closing his eyes as he set the journal flat in his lap, atop his puritanically virtuous dick. “All these songs and not one helpful explanation.”

“Or, alternatively,” Sam said, “all that brain and not one useful deduction.”

“What?” he said, and sat upright, startled, but she was gone when he blinked, forcefully trying to clear his vision. “Jesus,” he said to nothing, scrambling to all fours to run his hand over the place where she’d been. It was cool—not eerily so, obviously, having not been occupied by a ghost and certainly not a person. It was just empty air, and he was beginning to wonder if it was possible that he’d somehow gotten a contact high from something Lam had smoked earlier when there was another sound, like a knock, or maybe not. Julian whipped around, surveying the empty room before frowning again at the place Sam had been.

“This,” he said, flopping onto his back and speaking firmly and confidently to her absence, “is not real.”

“Julian?” came a voice, his heart stopping for a moment before he realized it was coming from the door.

Okay, so that explained the knock.

“Come in,” he blurted in a panic, shoving Sam’s notebook back under his mattress, and the door opened to reveal Cat Archman standing there, a curious look on her face.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

He realized the room was dark. “No, I was just…” _Hallucinating my dead sister!_ his brain supplied enthusiastically. “Nothing,” he assured her. “Everything okay?” he said, motioning like he intended to sit up, but she paused him, pulling the door closed behind her.

“No, don’t, I didn’t mean to disturb you. Is Lam here?”

“No. You okay?” he asked again, and she hesitated.

“Yeah, I’m,” she began, and stopped, chewing her lip. “Well, not really, no.”

Oh, Julian realized, swallowing.

Dark room. Late night.

Pretty girl who came to see him.

Oh.

He shifted to the side, wordlessly making room for her on the bed, and tacitly she accepted his invitation, pausing to slip one foot out of her shoes, then the other. They were, from what he could tell, a pair of worn ballet flats he’d seen her in a dozen times. She was dressed in a pair of soft shorts, the line of her underwear visible beneath them, and his blood thrilled with the unlikely knowledge she’d come to him like this, helplessly, earnestly. She crawled into bed beside him, turning on her side and stretching out slowly, incrementally, like a snake. He inched towards her and her ankle slid between his, little puffs of closeness from her nose reaching the parted uncertainty of his lips.

And there it was: the smell of her hair, like flowers in spring. The pebbled skin on her bare midriff that he drew his palm over, reading her like Braille. Her hair falling around them both, the memory of her voice filling his mind, blooming in his thoughts, kaleidoscoping, manic and lawless and bright. The reinvention of desire right here in his bed. A place of dreamless monotony turned exquisite marketplace of contact.

Her hips were flush against his, her heart paced to his heart, both of them racing.

“Just one kiss,” she whispered, “okay? Just to get it out of our systems.”

There were necessary follow-up questions, morally speaking, but he didn’t ask them. He reached for her face, for the delicate shape of her chin, smoothing his touch over the swell of her lips before he raised them up to his. He stroked over the bow of them, then the valley, easing them carefully apart with the edge of his thumb, the warmth of her breath heating his palm until they were nose to nose, fate to fate.

“Just one,” he promised. Offer and acceptance, so to speak.

Worse intentions met with better judgments when he pulled her closer, his hand dropping to stroke down the ridges of her throat while he met her lips with his, slow at first. Glacially slow, because a person negotiating for one thing will make it last, and last, and last. She made a sound in his mouth—a tiny, inadvertent ardency. Impetuous catharsis, and unwisely, Julian’s baser longings were emboldened. A motion he would not claim full responsibility for (gravity, chemistry, inevitability) had somehow positioned him above her, just enough that he could tip her head back further, taste her deeper. Enough to feel her opening to the possibility of him, her chipped black nails clawing into the fabric of his t-shirt as a bud of delicacy unfurled to defenseless fruition.

It was one kiss. Technically. No one could say otherwise. He broke away from her breathlessly and she stared at him and he thought no, this was a mistake.

You have no idea how I will dream of this.

“Can I stay?” she said to him. It was like she’d lovingly parted his chest and cracked open his ribs. Like she’d reached in to cradle his heart in the palm of her hand.

Who else had ever asked that of him?

“Yes. Stay.”

He returned to his position on his side, facing her, and she closed her eyes, the brush of her lashes reaching his cheek.

“You soothe me,” she murmured, and though he wanted desperately to linger in this moment—to keep each breath of it for his waking self—he could feel himself drifting away almost immediately, lost to her, to the kiss that was already fading, and to everything they’d held so precariously between their lips.

* * *

He woke to the sound of his phone vibrating from the nightstand and rushed to silence it, assuming it to be his daily alarm. 

It was not.

“Hello?” he said, groggily answering the phone. He felt beside him for Cat, but she was gone, a cool vacancy left in the imprint of her absence. Outside the moon was still bright, the full effects of dawn not yet breaking.

“Oh good,” drawled the voice on the other end. “You’re up.”

“Hello?”

“Yes, hello Jules.”

Julian blinked, forcing himself upright. “Lam?”

“I need you to come get me,” Lam said. “I’m at the hospital.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing, just a broken arm. Very standard stuff.”

“I… what?”

“Barely a scratch, really. Anyway I need you to be a doll and bring my dad’s emergency card, would you? It’s inside my copy of The Search.”

“The what?”

“The Search, Julian, The Search. _In Search of Lost Time_? Don’t tell me you’ve no experience with Proust. I’ve had a very long night and can’t be bothered with this kind of disappointment.”

“Lam—” What the fuck. “Are you okay?”

“I will be, Julian, once you’ve brought me some form of socially accepted currency. These good people don’t work for free,” Lam replied in a blithely ironical tone.

“Why don’t you have your wallet?” Julian’s shoulder throbbed, tweaked from sleeping on it wrong. Evidence of spending the night with Cat.

“Well, I was a wee bit arrested, so I imagine one of these burly little law enforcers have it. You’d think they’d offer a little leeway given my recent injuries, but—” There was a metallic clang. “Evidently not!” Lam spat cheerily.

Julian blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Julian, as much as I’m enjoying this, please tell me you’ve at least gotten out of bed.”

“Lam, I don’t—”

“The book,” Lam cut in, “have you found it?”

“Uh—” Julian stumbled sideways out of bed, peering at Lam’s countless piles of books. “Just a sec—”

“Oh, certainly no rush, I’m sobering up wonderfully. Head-bangs galore. Cheerio!” Lam called to someone who was ostensibly not Julian. “Have you found it?”

“Uhhhh…” _In Search of Lost Time_ , a small but impossibly fat volume, was propping up one leg of Lam’s dresser. “Yes, found it.”

“Oh good! Well, see you shortly then, unless you’ve some other more pressing engagement to attend to,” Lam said as Julian cracked open the book, removing the card from what looked to be the inside of one of those old-fashioned library windows. The kind where the borrowing slips used to go, which meant this was a stolen library book. Because of course it was.

“You could have called your father,” Julian pointed out, slipping the credit card into his pocket. “For one thing, he has a car and I do not.”

“I expect we can exchange more of these amusing pleasantries later, can’t we?”

“How do you expect me to get there?” Julian asked, rubbing his temple.

“By any means necessary, I suppose. Have you no sense of adventure, Julian?”

“Lam,” Julian exhaled, sniffing his shirt and determining it clean enough, minus the faint scent of Cat’s floral perfume that still lingered on his skin. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Jules, Sam heartily assured me I would be,” Lam said with a tinkling false laugh, just before the line went dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs: "Here With Me" and "When the Dreams Run Dry." If you're reading this, it's too late!!!! I already love you forever.


	6. Pay My Respects to Grace and Virtue

Reid Karim was the youngest in his family, the accidental fourth of four, and the only boy. His father had owned a small bodega in New York City, which seemed to the Karims to be a different place, less utopic, after the events of September 11, 2001. Reid, named for the nurse who had caught his mother’s postpartum embolism and saved her life when the doctor had dismissed her complaints of cough and chest pain, had been hardly more than a baby at the time his father was killed—an accident, the police officer said, not a hate crime, merely coincidental. Already the man of the household, Reid would be reminded every day that he saw his father’s portrait on the mantle how carefully he would have to toe the line between what his family wanted for him and what the world would conceivably accept.

Were he anyone else he might have found it a more precarious balance, but Reid had always had a way of bringing equilibrium to things that were otherwise rattled and unsteady.

That he would choose to become an artist, a musician, was not intolerable to his family, for whom Reid’s voice had always been a source of delight. Reid was ten when his first nephew was born, the first of his mother’s many grandchildren, and Reid drew from his adolescence only memories of pleasant chaos, fat crying babies and gossiping sisters and laughter from the kitchen, which always smelled of familiar spices and comfort foods. An unflagging belief in a benevolent higher power was perhaps not always such a natural feat, but despite his family’s tragedy, Reid was still the fruit of joy. His mother said he was born with a song in his heart, simple as that, and though not all songs were cheerful, they were all gifts. It was a conviction Reid would carry around with him: that loss and grief could share a space with hope, and still all of it could make up a holy oeuvre, the overture of the divine.

The world outside his community in Brooklyn would be less forgiving at times. Even when people were not prejudicial and cruel outright, they were often passively mocking. How could he believe in Allah, or in the institution of Islam, in religion itself, in the practices of patriarchal hegemony, in the traditions that spanned the progress of millennia only to reinforce the old ways of supremacy over some? But because these were such easy questions compared to the obvious impossible one—Why had his father died when so many others were allowed to live?—Reid did not linger long on them. The answer is bigger than me, he would say. He was not meant to understand God’s will, and beyond that, he was happy not to. Let someone else shoulder the task of determining what was fair, or what justice ought to look like. For him, it was enough to feel music unfurling in his veins, the wings for something heavenly inside.

Which did not mean Reid never felt some pressure to hide, particularly when faith was so often taken for ignorance among the predominantly liberal elites who comprised the student population of Dives. It wasn’t hatred— _that_ , he felt, might have strengthened his beliefs, purely for some protective impulse over them—but it was certainly ridicule, mostly unspoken, and that made him less defensive than… sheepish. Was it possible he cleansed and fasted pointlessly, in service to an emptiness he mistook for meaning? He did not feel the answer could ever be yes, not with the beauty and peace those rituals brought to his family, but some days it was not such an easy no. On those days he considered: would I really be less if I skipped this prayer, only once? Would I really be so impure if I chose to act on desire as equally as I acted on the necessity of hunger or thirst?

Some days, yes, there was open harassment, like that day when he’d still been new and bemused and drinking tonic water at their collegetown dive, but it was Sam Kinney who’d come to his defense, flanked by Olympia Stax. In retrospect Olympia had done most of the talking, defending him the same way one of his sisters would have done if anyone dared look at him wrong, but later it was Sam who sought out Reid in private, when weeks of grumbling from his teachers about accommodating his “special needs” for worship and judgmental glances from his peers had been testing his resolve. 

“I know it feels lonely now,” Sam had said, “but someday it won’t anymore. Someday there will be a beautiful girl, funny and brave and from a family much different from yours, but your mother will be easily won and her father will be like the one you never knew. And the two of you will grow old together,” she assured him, squeezing his hand, and though her eyes were unfocused and her breath carried the wafting fumes of alcohol and terror, he squeezed helplessly back. “You’ll find heaven together, I promise,” Sam Kinney told him, so sure of her own prediction he felt it impossible not to take her at her word.

“So will you,” Reid said, wanting to give Sam the benefit of his own hope, his faith that good people always found good ends; that by saying so, he could share the wealth of his well-loved life with her, but she only smiled dazzlingly at him.

“Nah,” she said, “I already know this is all the heaven I’ll ever get,” and took another swig from the bottle, winking at him like maybe she meant something completely different from what she’d said.

He would never forget it, but he would never fully believe it, either. Even now he refused it as a possibility, partially because he had the advantage of being comforted by religion instead of shrunken by it, and partially because he knew the God he prayed to was no cruel being, nor some impassive arbiter or judge. Reid’s God was a kind God. Sam Kinney had been beautiful and broken, so Reid was comforted by the knowledge that however much his heart might ache without her, she was somewhere being beautiful and whole.

Reid, meanwhile, had his hands full with the people she’d left behind.

“Wmmomhizzit?” Em mumbled incoherently that morning, squinting up when Reid returned from his morning run around campus. Since Reid was always up early for his dawn prayers, he also took advantage of the morning peace to get a breath of fresh air outside, contemplating rhymes and harmonies while his feet struck the ground like a pulse.

“It’s just after seven,” Reid answered, adding, “I just saw Julian and Lam.”

“Mmmphmh,” said Em into their pillow, rolling over when Reid came over to give them a vigorous, playful shake. 

“Come on, get up,” Reid coaxed with a nudge, to which Em gave a groan in disheveled misery.

“Something’s going on there,” Em managed to mumble in actual English, though they still struggled to sit up. Em, much like Skit, was an utter nightmare in the mornings, and the irony of their inability to live together never failed to amuse Reid—who was admittedly easy to amuse, but still.

“You said the same thing yesterday,” Reid reminded Em, recalling the little disapproving purse of Em’s lips when Cat and Julian had slipped out of Archman’s classroom alone. _There’s something going on there_ , Em had said, peering at them through narrowed slits while Olympia channeled every ounce of sunshine to her voice to assure them it was probably nothing.

“Do you think Julian’s trying to corrupt _both_ of the twins?” Reid prompted Em now, smiling a little at the thought. Compared to his sister, Julian Kinney was almost moronically unthreatening. (Not that it would be surprising if Em thought otherwise.)

Em’s gruff response, though, was, “The Archmans can handle themselves,” to which Reid blinked, surprised.

“It’s _Julian_ you’re worried about?” Reid echoed with bemusement, and when Em failed to answer, he rose to his feet in theatrical shock. “Em, this is unbelievable news. Are you possibly… _not_ annoyed by him?”

“Of course not,” Em snapped, as Reid rolled his eyes. “He’s endlessly irritating, just like everyone. But it doesn’t mean he’s not trying his best,” Em grunted. “And anyway, I wouldn’t want to be in his position.”

“Which is?” Reid prompted, trying very hard not to laugh. (It was truly a spectacle to behold: Em Wilder in the throes of compassion, clearly loathing every moment of it.)

“Thrown into third year with no preparation? Assigned to a room with _Calamity Archman,_ of all people?” Em snorted derisively, leaning into the misanthropy that came so naturally. “Not to mention placed in an ensemble with the three most self-centered people on this campus? God,” Em rumbled, now fully upright and reaching for their water bottle (ironically stolen from Skit) in palpable disgust. “If Julian happens to be mistakenly convinced the universe revolves around Graves Nero and the Archmans, it’s only because they’ve surely convinced him it does. Thurston should have assigned him to _our_ ensemble, or I don’t know—” Em was ranting to themselves now, the words nearly drowned out by the water bottle. “To Olympia’s, at least.”

“Does that mean you’re ready to forgive Olympia, too?” Reid prompted admonishingly, and Em’s glare slid to his.

“Forgive her for what?”

Reid shrugged, falling onto his bed and massaging out his calves. “Whatever she’s done to upset you.”

“Who says I’m upset? I’m not upset,” Em said, or more accurately, snarled.

“You’re avoiding her,” Reid pointed out, deciding not to give an itemized list of how many of Olympia’s invitations had been blatantly refused by Em (with Reid as the unwilling conduit, of course). “You’ve lashed out at her more than usual,” Reid added, because they had been unusually unproductive during yesterday’s rehearsal. Not as unproductive as the fiasco of Archman, Archman, Nero, and Kinney, of course, but that wasn’t much of a leg to stand on as far as a defense.

“No I have not,” Em said brusquely.

“You have,” Reid corrected. “You even took Skit’s side over O’s, which is unprecedented.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Okay, fine,” Reid sighed, “it isn’t, everything is normal and nothing is wrong, my mistake.”

Em, whose hair had formulated itself into a birdlike mohawk via sleep, gave Reid an impatient look of please-do-not.

“Oh, and Lam’s arm was in a sling,” Reid recalled abruptly, now kneading his hamstrings. “I think it was broken.”

“Figures,” Em said with a derisive snort. “Only a matter of time before someone tried.”

“You think someone did that _to_ him?” Reid asked.

“Umm, yes, of course I do,” Em said, then added offhandedly, “Wonder if it was Nero.”

“No way,” Reid said, losing interest in stretching. “Graves? Risk his golden boy status? Not a chance.”

“Lam wouldn’t tell anyone even if he did,” Em said in their most pragmatic voice, up now and rifling through their collection of muted button-downs. “He’s a masochist,” Em tossed over at Reid. “Everyone knows that.”

“Oh, come on,” Reid sighed in disapproval, and Em looked over their shoulder, brows raised.

“You disagree?”

“Lam’s… _difficult_ , yeah, but a masochist? No way. He’s got an ego,” Reid pointed out, thinking of how frequently Calamity Archman used his position of favored son to repeatedly taunt and belittle his peers with apparent impunity. Mostly Graves Nero.

Well, come to think of it, _only_ Graves Nero, but it happened often enough to know it was well within the general purview of Lam’s typical behaviors. 

“What he has is talent,” Em corrected, “and he hates it, but he can’t stop using it.”

“So Lam’s an addict?”

“We’re all addicts,” Em muttered, mouth stiffening until they added tightly, “O’s definitely on something. Whatever Sam used to get for her nightmares, she’s using it again. Maybe abusing it.”

“Olympia? No way,” said Reid, coming instantly to her defense. “She knows better.”

“It’s not about knowing better, Reid. She’s suffering, she’s in pain, she needs it.” Em was facing their wardrobe again, numbly this time.

“Em,” Reid attempted. “If you’re worried about her—”

“I’m not,” Em scoffed, not turning around. “I’m just telling you, since we all know you’re too busy seeing people’s virtues to know what they actually are.”

That stung. Reid knew better than to think Em intended as much harm as the comment actually caused, given that so much of it came from defiant, projected self-contempt, but in fact Em was more capable of weaponized barbs than any of them because Em actually _did_ see the reality of people, even the good. Em had a tendency to suggest that Reid’s optimism came from ignorance, same with his faith, and worse, Reid had a tendency to believe it. Because no matter how hard-fought Reid’s optimism was—a daily battle for the belief that people were fundamentally good and capable of change and worth valuing, despite so much evidence to the contrary—Em was still right about him. 

Reid had a tendency to miss things about people. He had not noticed Olympia using drugs. He had not been prepared for the abruptness of Sam’s ending, even though she had all but told him. And it had taken far longer than it should have for him to notice the truth about Catastrophe Archman, and not for the usual reasons that others like Julian Kinney or Graves Nero could not; not because she had actively bothered to hide it from him—Reid, from whom Cat would gain absolutely nothing, not attraction or attention or anything else—but because he was so mired in cheerful, voluntary blindness to the flaws of his friends that he had not actually bothered to look.

It was Reid who’d overheard the conversation between Lam Archman and Sam Kinney the morning of her last day on earth. It had only been a second, barely worth a soundbite in the end, but he remembered it was unusual, very unusual, because while Lam was often ornery and irritable he was never so… frail.

“You’re lying,” Reid had heard Lam say. “You’re lying, you have to be, this is… it’s not funny, Sam, it’s really not funny—”

“It’s not me, Cal,” Sam had told him in her steady, unflinching voice. “I told you that. I’ve been telling you from the beginning—”

“I know that, Sam! Have I ever said a word otherwise?”

“You haven’t, I know—but I can tell you’re not really getting it. I’m not for you,” Sam said, sounding resigned. “I’m just not.”

“Why do you get to decide that?” Lam croaked, and by then Reid had already kept running, but the voices behind him had allegedly raised, getting louder until some other witness would eventually report to the administration that it had been a fight, a screaming match, and everyone else would agree that yes, that made sense, because Sam was notoriously intense and Lam Archman was infamously Lam Archman and though Reid would consider saying that in his opinion it hadn’t been the fire and brimstone feud that everyone else believed it was, he was already numb with the same tired lyrics to the same old refrain: Why had Sam Kinney died when so many others were allowed to live?

Ultimately, Reid’s memory of the conversation he’d overheard would remain locked in his head beside other trinkets; sadness and doubt he couldn’t willingly hang onto while still walking the path of his faith. The dead were gone; they had to be. They were at peace.

What mattered was the living, and more than that, it mattered how they continued to live.

“If something happens to Olympia,” Reid told Em, “you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

There was a long, uneven pitch of silence.

“I know,” Em said eventually.

It did not take a genius to know Em’s crime was nothing close to heartlessness, not apathy or indifference or anything else, though if Em was right, their silence might still cost Olympia all the same. But it was hard to blame Em, because however disillusioned Em allowed themselves to be, the truth was they were terrified, more afraid of receiving love than even the trial of being worthy of it, and Reid was braver because he had Allah, because he believed in God. If his addiction was his religion, if he fed his faith the way others fed their vices, it was for the same reason: to feel some relief, to flood his veins with something that would not feel so despairing as the possibility that he might live and die with no true purpose or meaning in between. If Reid had any great power he would use it, but the only gift he had was a voice that put others at ease, and so that was what he did. Ever the peacemaker, Reid was a human tranquilizer, dulling them all to a reasonable state of compliance. Did that make him any worse a fool than his friends? 

Reid rose to his feet, setting a hand on Em’s shoulder, and for the briefest instant, Em’s shoulders crumpled in relief. 

“I’m fine,” Em said after a moment, selecting an oatmeal colored shirt and a rust colored sweater and then turning their face conspicuously away.

* * *

It was only a kiss, or so Julian would frantically try to convince himself as he watched Graves lean towards Cat, a motion that appeared at first glance to be amicable or possibly even intimate—which, fuck, was not remotely the sort of behavior one might expect between newly estranged lovers, which meant they were no longer aggrieved and that Julian, therefore, was. 

Not that he regretted it. Though of course he did, _immensely_ , because how could he possibly face Graves now? Which was nothing compared to how he would next behave in Cat’s proximity. They’d always had a physical ease between them, something natural and magnetic, and what had led so instinctually to The Kiss was not so easily retracted or reversed. He could not now imagine being close to her without also leaning in to bury his face in her hair. Christ, and Graves! Would he be furious? Disappointed? Hurt? This was why people were meant to ask the moral questions in advance. Julian imagined the look of _you like me_ in Graves’ green eyes blowing out like a candle flame and had possibly the reverse of an orgasm.

It did not help that Julian’s head was pounding with sleeplessness and desperation and the rampant toxicity of the fumes emanating from Lam, who had opted not to shower or change his clothes upon their return from the hospital. Instead, he had apparently decided to join Julian for the early symposium he would likely otherwise have skipped.

“What?” Lam asked, tearing a page from Julian’s notebook and then also stealing his pen as if he actually planned to take notes, which seemed incredibly unlikely. “Am I supposed to simply stop attending classes just because I’m a newly minted criminal?”

Julian had every intention to not dignify this with an answer, firstly because he was fixated on watching Cat and Graves and secondly because Lam would only use his answer to further the conversation, which was untenable as far as options went. Unfortunately, he was not prepared for the possibility that Lam would continue talking regardless.

“You know, if you stare any harder you’ll burn a hole through her,” Lam said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Growling, Julian turned. “I’m not _staring_ , I’m—”

But Lam, of course, was smiling, because Julian was enough of an idiot to walk into an obvious trap.

“So why the bus?” Lam asked tangentially, referring to the method by which they had returned to campus. Hence their late arrival to Errata’s composition seminar and the reason Julian was not currently seated in his usual place beside Graves and Cat.

“Because I’m poor,” Julian muttered. 

“Didn’t you steal a car once?” Lam asked.

Julian’s mouth tightened, which only seemed to delight Lam more. “Are you suggesting I should have stolen a car to pick you up from the hospital?”

“Of course not, Jules, that would be ridiculous,” Lam scoffed. “I was merely postulating as to your options. After all, I did show you where my father parks _his_ vehicle, did I not?”

“Fine. Next time you wind up in the hospital, I’ll steal my professor’s car. Okay?”

“Well, Julian, I should think it’s hardly up to me what actions you deem reasonable in a moment of crisis,” Lam said, beginning to sketch something on the page from Julian’s notebook. Clearly he would not be taking notes, though thankfully something else had caught his attention by then.

Julian returned to his distant scrutiny of Cat, who in his opinion had taken unusual pains today as far as her appearance. Gone were the dark circles, the tired eyes, the oversized knits. Today she wore a pair of metallic-studded ankle boots and a fringed minidress, her shoulders covered by an oversized leather jacket that must have belonged to a man. Potentially to Graves Nero, given that Graves wore nothing but a thin white t-shirt and black jeans despite what Julian would call a reasonably chilly morning. Regardless, combined the two of them were picturesque in their snapshot of vintage stardom, neither giving a care for anything but the other, or so Julian was convinced in his malaise. Twice already Graves had reached over to rest a hand on Cat’s bare knee, filling Julian with a mix of nausea and craving. 

Had it really been only a kiss? He imagined it Disney-fied, cartoonish with oversized eyes, though his brain insisted it had really been far more pornographic, or at least lasciviously boudoir. Was it really just enough to wash him out of her system, like she’d said? Maybe she’d not even considered it a transgression because it was innocuous, like a kiss hello between platonic friends. Impossible, he did not feel the need to kiss his friends. Maybe he should write her a letter! Or a song? Or maybe what he needed was ten more years of therapy and a nap.

“You are _such_ a cliche,” commented Lam, and Julian startled to consciousness in time to shoot him an impatient glare. “Oh, come on,” Lam sighed, kicking his feet out directly into the leg of Julian’s desk, sending it shrieking slightly to the left as the rest of the class turned to look at them. “You could have at least picked someone more original. My sister, really?”

Julian forced an _everything’s fine!_ smile in Cat’s direction, which she did not return, her gaze already elsewhere. Perhaps she had never actually been looking at him to begin with, which Julian registered with a flame of mortification he could not now put out.

“I’m not… I _don’t_ ,” Julian hissed to Lam, who pursed his lips in abject disagreement. “Can you just shut up, please?”

“She and Nero are basically your classic dysfunctional romance,” Lam remarked in apparent refusal, beginning to doodle again on his page. “They fight, they break up, they get back together. Rinse and repeat. It’s a cycle you do not want to get caught in, believe me.”

“Did you say the same thing to my sister?” Julian muttered.

“Yes,” Lam said without looking up. 

“Rumor has it she didn’t exactly listen,” Julian said in a low voice, possibly to punish Lam for waking him up early. Or possibly because it was a matter of pressing curiosity, which was at least enough to distract him from his ongoing process of melting into the floor.

“Rumor _also_ has it I’m a murderer who killed Sam after she wound up with Nero’s baby,” Lam replied, dark gaze flicking up to Julian’s for half a second before returning to his sketch, which appeared to be a desert scene. “Do you believe that, too?”

Momentarily, Julian felt a chill. But then, recalling that was probably Lam’s sole intention, he shook it away. The one thing Destiny had been religious about was condoms, so whatever Lam was responsible for when it came to Sam’s death, that certainly couldn’t have been the cause of their argument. Sam was basically averse to carelessness (distinct, Julian had always thought, from recklessness), or so she’d been at eighteen.

Though, speaking of the young and reckless. “What happened to you?” Julian asked, gesturing to where Lam’s right arm currently sat in a sling. “You still haven’t told me.”

When he’d arrived at the hospital, Lam had been sitting silently in the waiting room, not even looking up when Julian arrived. There had been a brief lecture from a police officer telling Lam that the other party wasn’t pressing charges and he’d be free to go, though he’d better not “slip up” again or he’d spend his next overnight visit in lock-up. Considering the relatively burly officer was talking to a skinny, silent twenty-one-year-old with a broken arm, it was hard to tell why Lam was being threatened with jail. “Did they sedate you?” Julian had asked him, surprised to see that Lam was no longer ranting about Proust or whoever as he’d been on the phone. Lam had glanced first at the cop and then back at Julian, rising to his feet and exiting the hospital without bothering to answer.

“I broke my arm, Jules,” Lam informed him, shrugging with his less-damaged shoulder. “I don’t know what else there is to tell.”

Oh sure, because arms were so notoriously fragile. “Did you fall or something?”

“Probably,” said Lam, to which Julian frowned. Not that he hadn’t already come to expect the most infuriating possible answer from Calamity Archman where a normal or even honest one would do, but that one hadn’t been particularly combative. He wasn’t trying to annoy Julian.

“What do you mean 'probably'?” 

“I mean, it tracks,” Lam replied, painstakingly adding tiny details to his sketch.

So maybe he wasn’t _trying_ to annoy Julian, but he certainly wasn’t trying not to, either.

“Lam, I’m just trying t-”

“Mr. Kinney,” called Professor Errata, prompting the other heads in the room to swivel to his yet again. “Is there something so very interesting you’d like to discuss it with the rest of the group, or may I continue my lecture?”

“It’s my fault, Professor,” Lam cut in before Julian could open his mouth. “I was just returning Julian’s pen. Oddly enough, I seem to have arrived very unprepared for class,” he remarked with an air of utter bemusement, handing said pen dutifully over to Julian as if that had indeed been the exchange in question.

Unable to recognize whether she was being mocked, Professor Errata wisely chose to continue her lecture with merely a lingering warning look. Julian, meanwhile, stole a glance at Lam’s torn sheet of notebook paper, which now contained a drawing that looked remarkably like Dali’s persistence of memory, only instead of clocks they were crowns hung lethargically from ostentatious showgirl cacti. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Julian murmured.

“Do what?” Lam countered, beginning to fold the drawing into a paper airplane, and Julian rolled his eyes.

When he looked up to return his attention to Errata’s lecture, he caught Cat’s eye by accident. _Hi_ , she mouthed, perfectly unremarkable, only the lips he’d tasted mere hours ago were twisting up in her usual look of greeting, warmth sparking in her eyes like she’d been waiting all morning to see him. But she hadn’t; couldn’t have been. 

Right?

As Errata turned back to the board, Cat turned away, back to her notes, and beside her, Graves’ knee brushed hers, the two of them exchanging a glance and a smothered smile at the fortuity of the contact.

Jesus fucking Christ, Julian thought with visceral panic, his stomach churning with the gravity of her loss. 

It was only a fucking kiss.

* * *

Lam’s arbitrary ubiquity in Julian’s day didn’t even last until their second lecture, at which point he resumed his occupation of the back of Welch’s classroom and eventually did not even bother attending their afternoon advisory session with Iver. (Since Cat’s intervention on Julian's behalf, Iver had been largely ignoring him, a blissful outcome Julian dearly hoped would last.) 

That day, Graves was particularly enthused while they discussed their end-of-term performances, for which they were expected to have decided on an original composition by the following week. It seemed that if nothing else, Cat had convinced Graves it was worth investing in the success of their ensemble, which Julian later learned was due to their work on the song they'd written together for Sam. 

“The song's really good, honestly. It’s perfect,” Graves told Julian, one arm loosely around Cat’s shoulders while they traversed the grassy knoll later that week. “I can’t believe you guys pulled that out so fast.”

“You can take the opening verse,” Cat told him. “And we can join you after the second stanza, maybe?”

“Sure, yeah, that’d be great—”

“Don’t we have to discuss this with Lam?” Julian asked, feeling pretty certain that things would not go so smoothly when their fourth musketeer had a chance to object. “What part does he usually sing?”

“God, like Lam even cares,” Cat said with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t worry about him. Oh, hey,” she added, brightening as she turned to Julian. “A couple of the recent alums I keep in touch with are throwing a party at a house off campus this weekend. Wanna come?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Julian said, temporarily thrown by the invitation. “But listen, about Lam—”

“I’ll deal with him. There’s a small cover, by the way, for the alcohol and stuff, but I’ll get you Renata's Venmo info,” Cat said, nudging Graves before twisting around to look at him. “You’re coming now that Julian’s in, right?” she prompted, as Julian tried to process what a “small cover” would wind up being. Surely not more than five dollars, right? Ten? He’d already spent more money than he’d intended to on getting to the pharmacy the night he’d gotten wasted with Lam, and his savings account had fewer zeroes than he wanted to admit.

“Of course.” Graves kissed the spot between her brows. “I told you, if you want me to come, I’ll come.”

“Well, I know you don’t like Renata—”

“Babe, it’s fine.” Graves looked distractedly at Julian, half-smiling. “You won’t like them either, but they knew Sam.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Julian asked, miraculously not allowing his line of sight to follow all the places Graves and Cat were touching, leaning into each other as naturally as if they shared a single vault of breath.

“Just some people who were fourth years when we were just starting,” Cat said. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Olympia’s coming too.”

“Oh, yeah, fine—”

“Oh hang on, there’s Skit, one sec,” said Cat, pulling away as Graves and Julian faced each other in her absence, suddenly awkward (Julian’s fault, presumably). 

“So,” Graves said. “Something happen with Lam this morning? I was expecting you to meet us before Errata’s lecture.”

“Oh, yeah. He was arrested or something,” Julian said, to which Graves gave a surprised burst of a laugh. “I don’t really know,” Julian sighed, “he won’t tell me exactly what happened.”

“Yeah, Lam’s a weird one.” Graves was looking very intently at Julian, who in turn felt an overwhelming need to look anywhere else. “We were gonna grab dinner,” Graves said, gesturing to where Cat was swapping notes with Skit. “You wanna come?”

“Oh, uh. I should really do some work,” Julian said. “I’ve got stuff for Iver, plus with my performance critique coming up for Archman…” In reality, the one thing Iver had not done lately was overload him with work, and though his performance for Archman’s class was looming, it didn’t exactly inspire a stay-in-to-rehearse kind of dread. 

“Ah,” Graves said, half-smiling. “So then I’ll probably see you later, huh?”

He gestured to the edge of campus where they usually ran into each other, but for reasons Julian couldn’t entirely sort out—Cat? Lam? Something completely unrelated?—the idea of being alone with Graves was overpoweringly discomfiting. “Yeah, maybe,” he said hastily, a lie, at precisely the moment Cat returned.

“Hungry?” she asked. “We were just about to grab dinner.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah but no,” Julian said idiotically, his discomfort rapidly eclipsing his ability to formulate words. “But next time, though—”

“Well, we might be there a while. Let us know if you get hungry,” Graves said, tucking one arm around Cat’s waist while she gave Julian a last, lingering hint of wistfulness before heading to the dining hall.

Julian, meanwhile, took the stairs two at a time, relieved to be alone at last in his bedroom. He wondered if his sheets would still smell like Cat, or if maybe his brain would be kind enough to trick him into believing they did? Again, the possibility of masturbation nagged at him, opportunistic as such thoughts tended to be. He opened his door, tossed his keys onto the desk, and contemplated whether he might find equal nourishment in a nice cup of tea when something suddenly appeared from the window.

“Oi,” said Lam’s head, popping up from the base of the frame. “Saw you with my sister and Nero on the knoll. I told you the whole thing is fucked,” he said decidedly, and then disappeared again.

“Are you stalking me?” Julian asked gruffly, contemplating the haven of his bed with a forlorn sigh before bracing himself on the window frame, climbing down to the now-familiar landing on the other side. Lam was writing, it appeared, with several pages of his notebook curling up from the pressure of his ballpoint pen. He still hadn’t showered, from the looks of it, though it occurred to Julian that with the limited use of one arm, he might not have been able to. 

Wait. “How did you climb out here?” Julian realized aloud, to which Lam gave him a look of revulsion for his supreme idiocy.

“It didn’t break my fucking legs, Julian,” he said. “And by the way, I got you a job.”

“What?”

“I climbed with my _leeeeeegs_ ,” Lam said slowly, as if Julian were a child or particularly hard of hearing.

“No, I meant—”

“I know what you meant. Sit down, you’re making me uncomfortable.” He glanced up at Julian as if to punctuate this, and Julian, for lack of a better option, sat. “You’re singing with me at the bar this weekend,” Lam said. “On Saturday night.”

“Oh.” 

“Oh?” Lam mimicked irritably. “So suddenly you’re _not_ poor?”

“No, I just… made plans,” Julian said. “For a party or something.”

“Oh right, that,” Lam said, adding offhandedly, “I didn’t realize you were already such an institutional favorite.”

“What?”

“It’s Renata’s party, right? She’s the worst person on the face of the earth,” Lam informed him matter-of-factly. 

“Does that include Graves?” Julian asked, genuinely curious as to the answer.

“Nero's an idiot, not a monster,” Lam said with a dismissive shrug. “He’s barely in humanity’s bottom ten, and yes," he clarified airily, "it _is_ for lack of effort.”

“He seems to think you hate him.”

“Well, Graves Nero is fundamentally fucked,” Lam said. “It’s not his fault. He’s extremely susceptible to a very particular kind of nonsense.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know. It’s his problem, not mine.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “So then why do you call him the chosen one?”

“Because he’s good.” Lam scribbled something down on the page, illegible. “He’s also very pliable.”

“Pliable?”

“Pliable,” Lam confirmed unhelpfully. “Eager to be under someone’s thumb. My father’s, for example.”

“Unlike you,” Julian observed.

Lam seemed amused. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m desperate for someone to control me, can’t you tell?”

“You do have a terrible need to be managed,” Julian agreed, before adding carefully, “So are you going to tell me what happened to you last night?”

“Why, are you volunteering to take on the position of puppeteer?” asked Lam. “Shall I dance for you now, Julian Kinney?”

His tone was typically biting, but for some reason it reminded Julian of something Lam had said on the phone.

“You told me that Sam said you’d be fine,” Julian reminded him.

“So she did,” Lam agreed. 

“Did she say something specific, or…?”

Lam made a motion so sharp that Julian nearly jumped out of the way before realizing it was a total overreaction. It turned out that all Lam had done was tear a page out of his notebook, but something about Lam and sudden movements had Julian frequently on his guard. (Very fight or flight-y stuff.)

“Here,” Lam said, handing him a page. “Wanted to perform this on Saturday, so learn it.”

Julian looked down at the lyrics, sighing internally. “How am I supposed to get to the bar, exactly?”

“It’s a surprise,” Lam said.

“A surprise, or a mystery?”

“Either. Both.” 

“Okay, well do I need to bring anyth-”

“Just your usual sunny disposition,” Lam assured him, and rose awkwardly (one-handed) to his feet, swatting Julian’s assistance away as he prepared to climb back into their room.

“Lam,” Julian growled after him. “You know you’re one of the last people who talked to my sister, right? You could give me something,” he said, and when Lam paused with an unlikely and possibly imagined hesitation, Julian scrambled to his feet. “Please,” he attempted, eye level with Lam this time.

Lam’s gaze darted elsewhere and then back. “She told me I wasn’t her destiny,” he said.

 _She was obsessed with it_ , Julian heard Olympia say. _With destiny._

“Oh,” said Julian. Not that he was expecting to hear something like “tell Julian that I sent him all my songs because of [insert very simple explanation here] and also tell him I love him and maybe add that I forgive him for running away and that I have every intention to call,” but still, that was not the response he’d been hoping for.

The evidence that his sister had been meticulously parting with the intimate pieces of her life seemed damningly conclusive. More so each time.

“Look, if I’d known that was the last time,” Lam began before cutting himself off, jaw stiffening again. “Not that it matters,” he corrected himself with a detached look of displeasure, “but if I’d known, I would have asked more questions.” 

“So the rumors are false, then,” Julian joked bitterly, not knowing what else to say. “You didn’t actually kill her.”

Lam looked physically repulsed by the reminder.

“I never said that,” he reminded Julian at a mutter, climbing one-armed through the window again.

* * *

Lam came in and out over the next few days, though he didn’t go to class. He seemed to be writing feverishly, with a fury diametrically unrecognizable and still somehow fundamentally aligned with Cat’s intense, laser focus. Unlike his twin, Lam was chaotic and completely unmethodical, to the point where his sleep patterns changed and even his footfall was different. He seemed to be his own metronome, stomping around during lost hours of the night until their downstairs neighbor, a second year who’d arrived wielding a violin bow as a weapon, demanded that he stop. Julian apologized, because Julian was apologetic as a person and eternally guilty for taking up too much space, but Lam began demonically speaking in tongues until the second year eventually gave up and stormed away.

“It’s not ‘tongues,’ Jules, it’s _one_ tongue, Old English. Have you never read _Beowulf_?” demanded Lam before beginning to meditate on a pile of Julian’s t-shirts, which he was evidently still at by the time Julian awoke again for class.

“Your brother,” Julian informed Cat when he fell into his usual seat, “is driving me crazy.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile that was more like a wince. “He’s… a difficult person. Barely house-trained.”

“Does he have any like… tricks? Something to sedate him?” 

“You could try having him sit down with Reid,” Cat joked. “Lam once took a nap for twenty entire minutes after a conversation with him about the weather.”

“Okay, but seriously,” Julian said. “Has he told you about his arm yet?”

“He doesn’t tell me anything, Julian, I promise,” Cat said with a shrug. “Never has, probably never will.”

“You’re not worried?”

“About Lam?” Cat let out a tiny scoff. “Frankly I’m more worried about you.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s not going to stab me or anything,” Julian assured her. “Like, seventy percent sure.”

“Those are unusually high odds,” Cat said, rewarding him with a smile. “So you’re probably fine.”

She’d given him the Venmo username for one @moonlightrenata, which was presumably a delightful joke (Beethoven, always a crowd pleaser). He’d pulled up the app and scrolled to find dozens of similar transactions, most of them marked with music note emojis, stars, and bottles of popped champagne. He also caught a telling flash of @EmWilder and found himself astounded, grabbing Olympia specifically to show her what appeared to be a miracle. “Is Em actually mingling with the public at large?” he asked, and though Olympia had been trying to lure Em out of their room for weeks, she looked suddenly grey and queasy at the knowledge that this party had somehow done the trick.

“It appears so,” she said with a forced smile, and then disappeared, tight-lipped, to speak with Reid.

“Okay, what is the deal with this Renata person?” Julian finally asked Skit, mostly because she was closest to him. He’d wanted to ask Graves, whose nighttime wanders to the edge of campus had become something of a staple for Julian over the past month, but something—Cat? Lam? His conscience? GHOSTS?—continuously stopped him. Lam was obviously unreliable, Reid was busy with Olympia, and Cat seemed insistent the entire thing was no big deal, nothing to see here, so that left very few options as far as clarity.

“So here’s the thing about Dives,” Skit said, who was transcribing a messy page of handwritten notes to sheet music. “It’s really hard to get in, right? But even harder to get out. The job market for bards is pretty much nonexistent. You either make it, or you… I don’t know, don’t.” She waved a hand blindly at nothing, ostensibly referring to the hazy, receding line of every Dives graduate’s future. “It’s why the fourth years get so intense. Only the top 10% of the class wind up making a successful career in music, and most of them will be small time songwriters or composers.” 

Ah, Julian thought, so that was what was at stake. The bogeyman of the preternaturally talented: obscurity. Heaven or hell, their fates determined by the judgment day of graduation.

“So Renata is…?” Julian prompted.

“Not one of the lucky ones,” Skit confirmed with a snort. “I mean she was, at one point, supposedly. But the thing is,” she hummed to herself thoughtfully, “you come here, you do some magic, you live a weirdly compressed life for four years getting sucked into the fucked-up lifestyle of a tortured genius, and then you go back to the real world. So like, it’s understandable.”

It was very difficult to get a point out of everyone, but particularly Skit. “What’s understandable?” Julian pressed.

“She’s a dealer,” Skit said, and looked up. “You get that that’s why Em is going, right?”

“But Em doesn’t even drink,” Julian protested, finding it supremely unlikely that Em would willingly do drugs. (Em didn’t seem to care for altering their state of mind with so much as an irresponsibly optimistic thought, much less chemical substances.)

“No,” Skit said impatiently, as if Julian had missed something, which evidently he had. Before he could question her about it, though, she’d continued on a separate thought, adding, “Supposedly Renata was with Iver for years. Nearly dragged him down with her until Archman had to interfere,” she said, returning to her transcription as Julian felt a renewed understanding of Cat’s confrontation with Iver: _It’s not my father’s fault you couldn’t make it anywhere else._

“Why does Cat even want to go to this party?” Julian asked with a sudden disgust, which he felt certain had to be a remnant from his mother. She’d always hated “lowlifes,” which was saying something, considering her trajectory in life.

(Also, Jesus. Everybody knew everybody, apparently, though Julian supposed that was to be expected of small rural towns.)

“Cat and Sam were friends with Renata and her circle,” Skit said with a shrug. “Olympia they tolerated since she was Sam’s roommate, but the rest of us weren’t cool enough for obvious reasons,” she said, gesturing to her general air of decent human being.

Julian frowned. “Did Sam…?”

“Partake? Yeah.” Skit shrugged. “I guess theoretically for some people it can be recreational? It seemed to be for Sam. Just, you know, not most people.”

She looked up then, as if she’d just remembered something.

“In case you’re wondering, the police did talk to Renata,” she said, as Julian’s stomach lurched. “But it didn’t really go anywhere,” she assured him. “Sam was clean.”

“You’re sure?” Julian asked, not even aware that he’d been about to numbly process the possibility that Sam had been influenced by something other than herself. Was that better or worse than the possibility that she’d gone swimming that day on purpose?

“Can anyone really be sure?” Skit said apologetically. “But you’ll see when you meet Renata.”

Julian supposed he would.

* * *

The plan was that Julian would perform with Lam and then meet Cat and the others at the party. He’d left out the details of what exactly he’d be doing in the meantime, but the others were too embroiled in their own lives to bother with the weird intricacies of his. Em and Olympia were blatantly not speaking, while Graves and Cat were, by contrast, attached at the hip. When Julian told Cat he had something to take care of before the party, she’d simply asked if he needed Graves to pick him up. 

“Oh, yeah, maybe,” he said uncomfortably.

“Okay cool, just text me,” Cat assured him, as if his needs were hers to satisfy and similarly, Graves was hers to command. 

Which, Julian supposed with another uncomfortable lurch, they probably were.

Saturday night arrived without fanfare, the usual uncannily quiet atmosphere of students who came and went for the weekend or cloistered in their rooms to study and sleep. Lam, choosing that day to be obnoxiously unavailable instead of obnoxiously omnipresent, left Julian a note with the keys to his father’s car, telling him to meet him at the dive bar. A small voice in Julian’s head wondered if Lam were trying to frame him somehow— _look, a student with a criminal record lurking around for no reason, WHO KNOWS what he could possibly be up to in the faculty parking lot!_ —but he needn’t have bothered worrying. He coincidentally ran into Professor Archman, who was crossing campus from his office, and blurted out that Lam had given him the keys.

“Well I imagine so,” replied Archman dazedly. “Calamity is not in the habit of driving.”

Julian tried to make that make sense, but failed. “What?” 

“He doesn’t care for complex machinery,” Archman said, adding, “Lovely he’s found a friend.”

Julian blinked, then discarded his many urgent admissions to the contrary.

“Professor Archman, about my… er, abilities,” Julian said, attempting to keep Archman’s attention before he left. “We never really discussed the day that I, um. Conjured the hologram of your wife, so—”

“That was not a hologram,” Archman said.

“Oh.” Julian frowned. “Well, I just thought—”

“I’ll have some relevant literature for you on Monday,” Archman informed him, continuing his path to the faculty apartments. “Enjoy the party with Calamity,” he added, and despite every indication that Julian should no longer be surprised by anything Archman said, he balked.

“You know about the party?” Julian asked, to which Archman gave him a bemused look in response.

“Of course,” he said. “We professors are neither blind nor deaf, unfortunately.”

“And you’re not… going to stop him?” Julian asked. Given everything he’d heard about Renata, it seemed unlikely Archman would approve.

“Calamity knows how to handle far worse than Miss Stirling,” Archman said in apparent reassurance. “Traditional methodology is very simple,” Archman added. “If you forget, I’m sure Calamity can refresh your memory.”

“What about Cat?” asked Julian.

“Catastrophe?” echoed Archman.

“Yes.”

Archman looked bewildered. “What about her?”

“Well, you just keep mentioning Lam, so—”

“Catastrophe is certainly not at risk,” said Archman with something like a bristle of distaste. “In any case, enjoy your evening. Youth is fleeting,” he offered as a parting benediction, and Julian stared after him before realizing he really ought to go.

“About time,” Lam said impatiently when Julian walked into the shabby dive bar. “You do realize call time was six, don’t you?” he said, adding, “You’ll get paid after we’re done, assuming you don’t monstrously suck.”

“I didn’t realize there was an actual call time,” Julian said, glancing doubtfully around. Outside the sun was just beginning to set, and a sweeping glance told Julian that this, much like every off-strip casino he’d ever been inside, was not a place people wanted to see with the lights up. “And what happens if I _do_ monstrously suck?”

“Probably nothing,” Lam said, leaping onto the stage. “Ready?”

“Lam, I don’t—”

But the music was already starting, an ethereal cloud of distant harmony filling the air. “ _I was a timid Rockwellian boy_ ,” Lam sang, “ _she was tattooed and ready to deploy, gave me reservation and the like_ —Jules, are you having a stroke? Get up here, man— _but she could be the dangerous type—_ ”

“ _But I threw caution,_ ” Julian sang hastily and not very well, joining Lam clumsily on stage, “‘ _cause something about the yin and the yang was pushing my boundaries out beyond my imagining_ —”

“ _While you were out there chewin’ on fat for probable cause_ ,” Lam continued, his one good hand cupped seductively around his mic while the opposite foot tapped out the song’s percussion, “ _I let go, while you were out there weighing odds, I was imploding the mirage_ —Jules, get it together, _while you were out there looking like that, struck my name from the camouflage. I wasn’t lost in the collage, I was imploding the mirage—_ ”

“ _I was imploding_ ,” Julian panted, attempting to keep up with Lam, who’d somehow tossed his mic into the air and flipped it, catching it easily with his unbroken arm, “ _the mirage—_ ”

The musical line was big and bright, bold and imaginative in bursts of the spectacular, like the lobby of the Bellagio hotel. Lam had given the melody something, some of whatever it was he usually inserted into his songs, and between them Sam had taken the stage, thrilling in her blue dress like she’d been waiting for this, just waiting.

“ _I had to do it, I had no other choice_ ,” Lam sang theatrically to her, dropping romantically to one knee. “ _You’ve got to listen to the inside voice! A bullet train will get you there fast, but it won’t guarantee a long last_ —hit it, Jules!” he said, pointing like Elvis.

“ _Sometimes it takes a little bit of courage and doubt,_ ” Julian replied with an unconfident attempt to relax, “ _to push your boundaries out beyond your imagining—_ ”

The chorus swelled again, a tinkling of angelic enthusiasm embellishing Lam’s breezy kick-turn. “ _While you were out there chewing on fat for probable cause, I let go. While you were out there weighing odds, I was imploding the mirage. While you were out there looking like that, struck my name from the camouflage. I wasn’t lost in the collage, I was imploding the mirage, I was imploding the mirage—_ ”

“ _I was spellbound by the show_ ,” Lam sang breathlessly, softly, to Sam, who wrinkled her nose: _stop, stop, just kidding, keep going_. Lam, meanwhile, grinned at her, looking up at Julian encouragingly and almost—if he believed Lam were capable of such a thing—guilelessly. “ _The matchless power of the glow—_ ”

“ _I was bound by golden shackles, getting by,_ ” Julian sang, “ _she tripped the breaker, blew the fuse, doesn’t need no pair of shoes. Her wings have come, and—_ ”

He broke off, the line suddenly renewing itself in his mind. As he watched his sister twirl onstage, the song weaponized; more than simply words he’d once read on the page.

_Her wings have come, and she’s ready for the sky._

He stumbled over one of the wires on stage, attached to nothing, not that anyone seemed to notice or care. It was a different bartender from the first night Julian had been there, a different cocktail waitress, this one entirely unfazed by either Julian or Lam, but even in front of apathetic strangers, Julian couldn’t steady himself. 

“Take five,” Lam suddenly announced, dropping to the edge of the stage and kicking his legs out, removing a pen from behind his ear and scribbling something down on a notepad he removed from his pocket. 

The music, Julian realized, had long since stopped. 

“Sorry,” he croaked, realizing he’d disrupted their rehearsal. “I guess I just… I didn’t realize until she was standing there that the song was about, you know—”

“It’s fine,” Lam said dismissively, not looking up.

Julian, predictably, felt guilty, as he often did, though it did seem relatively unprecedented that he would feel so inadequate compared to Lam. “It’s a good song,” he attempted, painfully eager, and Lam gave him a look that said, plainly, _don’t._ “It’s just very, um. Big?” Julian added, and to that Lam managed a laugh.

“Here. Try this one,” Lam told him, handing him the page of notes and returning the pen behind his ear. 

The moment Julian took the page, the stage beneath him began to rumble; not like thunder. More like a kitten purring. Something inside him stirred, building slowly, while his eyes skimmed the page.

“ _I did my best to notice when the call came down the line, up to the platform of surrender, I was broad but I was kind. And sometimes I get nervous when I see an open door_ ,” Julian sang, his voice a kind of wispy rasp, “ _Close your eyes, clear your heart, cut the cord._ ”

“ _Are we human_ ,” Lam joined in, nudging him with a smirk, “ _or are we dancer? My sign is vital, my hands are cold, and I’m on my knees looking for the answer—_ ”

“ _Are we human_ ,” Julian sang with his own slowly creeping smile, “ _or are we dancer?_ ”

“ _Pay my respects to grace and virtue_ ,” Lam went on, leaping onto the stage for the second verse. “ _Send my condolences to good_.”

“ _Give my regards to soul and romance_ ,” Julian latched on, scrambling up with the page of lyrics clutched tightly in his hand. “ _They always did the best they could—_ ”

“ _And so long to devotion, you taught me everything I know—_ ”

“ _Wave goodbye—_ ”

“ _Wish me well—_ ”

“ _You’ve got to let me go_ ,” Julian said. This pain, the same pain but different, was suddenly crystalline and bright as he attempted Lam’s little on-stage spin—and somehow, magically, achieved it.

“ _Are we human?_ ” Lam sang to him in delighted approval, eyes bright. “ _Or are we dancer?_ ”

“ _My sign is vital,_ ” Julian answered, “ _my hands are cold—_ ”

“ _And I’m on my knees, looking for the answer_ ,” they sang to each other in unison, the ripple of Sam’s hips swaying along to the race of Julian’s pulse. “ _Are we human, or are we dancer?_ ”

“ _Will your system be alright when you dream of home tonight?_ ” Lam posed, whipping his sweaty curls back from his forehead.

“ _There’s no message we’re receiving_ ,” Julian erupted back, eyes shutting as he belted, “ _let me know, is your heart still beating?_ ”

“ _Are we human? Or are we dancer? My sign is vital, my hands are cold, and I’m on my knees, looking for the answer—_ ”

“Wait, stop,” Lam said, thrusting his good arm out to cut Julian off, letting the song’s rhythm swell. His hand smacked flat into Julian’s chest and stayed there, restlessly pounding out an elongated build until Lam turned to Julian with a look of satisfaction, or maybe triumph. “Okay, ready? Now—”

“ _You gotta let me know, are we human or are we dancer?_ ”

The two of them were jumping artlessly together on the stage, which in response creaked ever so warningly beneath them.

“ _Are we human, or are we dancer?_ ”

By the time they collapsed—Julian resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath while Lam managed huge, gulping sounds of manic laughter—there was a low applause coming from the door.

“Weird song,” said the clapping security guard, the same one who’d let Julian in the previous time. “Weird. But fun, though.”

“Shut up, Lou,” replied Lam breathlessly, flushed with joy, his eyes meeting Julian’s with the euphoria of a man who’d forgotten, for just one blessed second, that three minutes of the perfect song could convince you, however incorrectly, that life, and love itself, might never actually have to end.

* * *

“Alright, it’s not much,” Lam said, handing Julian fifty-some dollars in a thick stack of small bills. “Some weekends are better than others. Come back for _Monster Mash_ on Halloween and you’ll be a solid hundredaire.”

“Hey, I appreciate it,” Julian said sincerely, forcing the bills into the worn material of his empty wallet. “Seriously, I do.”

Lam gave him a crooked, half-suspicious look of mm, whatever.

“It was fun,” Julian added, which was true. Lam was definitely the better performer, but he’d warmed to it as they went, largely because the drunker their patrons got the easier it was to remember they really didn’t give a shit what he was doing to begin with.

Julian raised his shirt to his nose, sniffed it, and frowned. Not exactly roses. “Well, hopefully this party is equally sweaty,” he muttered to himself, pulling out his phone to text Cat.

“Hey.” Lam’s hand shot out, closing around Julian’s wrist and nearly startling him into dropping it. “I’ll take you.”

“What?” Julian frowned at him, thumb pausing on Cat’s name. “You sure?”

“Did you see me take a drink?” Lam said defensively.

“What? That’s not what I meant—”

“Take it or leave it,” Lam said, ostentatiously tossing his father’s keys in the air and catching them before beckoning over his shoulder. “You parked in the lot, yeah?”

Julian turned with confusion, following him. “You could just come,” he suggested, as Lam slid him a supremely doubtful side glance. “I mean if you’re going to go out of your way to take me, you might as well, right?”

“Renata Stirling does not interest me,” Lam replied flatly, keeping a determined half-stride ahead of Julian until he spotted his father’s car. “Nero, I’m sure, disagrees,” he added, pulling the door open and dropping into the driver’s seat. 

Julian sighed, opening the passenger door and settling himself somewhat more gingerly inside. “Are you sure you want to drive? You have one arm," he pointed out, which Lam clearly did not find relevant as he reached across his torso to shift gears with his left hand. "Plus your dad said you’re ‘opposed to machinery’ or something."

“I typically prefer not to,” Lam agreed, turning over his shoulder and backing out. “But it’s not because I can’t.”

“Okay.” Julian fidgeted, watching Lam pull into the street. “So what’s your issue with Graves this time?”

“Same as it always is,” Lam said, fiddling with the air conditioning vent when they hit a red light. “He’s not human, he’s dancer,” he added with a smirk, and Julian rolled his eyes.

“What does that mean in your head, exactly?”

“Told you. Someone’s pulling the strings.” Lam’s eyes flashed alongside passing streetlights. 

“Who? Cat?” As far as Julian could tell, that seemed unlikely.

“She wishes.” Lam shrugged.

“Lam.” Julian gave him an admonishing look, and Lam snorted.

“Fine, sorry. Sibling rivalry or whatever.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Cat’s fine. She gets lonely, makes dumb choices.”

Julian could certainly relate, though he left that part out. “And you think Graves is a dumb choice? He was your friend, allegedly.”

Another shrug. “Some people are just bad for each other.”

“Ah.” Julian’s knee twitched as they drove on in silence, Lam traversing the side streets of old, quaint little homes until they reached a house that was visibly more alive than the others. It was a little Victorian-style house with a big front porch, the balcony on the second floor crowded with smokers. Lam pulled up to one of the cars parked immediately outside the house and stared up at it, grimacing.

“Good luck with that,” he said, flicking his hazard lights on. (To his credit, he was definitely not a bad driver.)

“Thanks.” Julian shot a quick text to Cat that he was there, then opened the passenger door, pausing for a moment as he remembered something. “Oh, wait,” he realized before he’d completely disembarked, obviously annoying Lam with his sudden hesitation. “Your dad said something about knowing how to handle Renata?”

“Mm," Lam said evasively. "While she’s talking to you, list off ten things you know about yourself in your head,” he advised. “If you can’t get to ten, bail immediately.”

“Wait, what?” Julian asked, still half-out the door, but Lam had already put the car in drive.

“Make good choices,” he advised, and then he was gone.

* * *

On the inside, the house was no different from any other party atmosphere Julian had ever been in. True, most of the ones he’d seen or contributed to were usually in cheap hotel rooms or shitty apartments, but something about carousing young people always turned out looking approximately the same. Small groups of people turned to notice him as he traversed the cup-strewn porch and entered the front door; others pointedly didn’t. He spotted Em standing alone by an old fireplace and wove through the crowd, giving them a nod as he approached.

“Hey,” Julian said, as Em shrugged a typically ambivalent greeting in response. “Where’s everyone else?”

“O’s right there,” Em said, gesturing to where Olympia was laughing with a group of girls Julian recognized from Dives. “Cat and Graves are with Renata somewhere.”

“Did the others not come?”

“No,” Em said, sipping from what Julian recognized as Skit’s water bottle. 

“Having fun?” Julian asked doubtfully.

Em grimaced. “Not here for fun,” they said.

Julian turned to look at Olympia, lifting a hand in greeting when she caught his eye. She smiled broadly, waving him over, and he mouthed back that he’d find Cat (still no text from her, but oh well) and then circle back. She pouted, but nodded, wiggling her fingers in a telegraphed see-you-later. 

“She seems fine,” he commented to Em.

“That’s the point,” Em confirmed dismissively, taking another sip and waving him off. “Cat’s probably in the backyard.”

Julian offered something obligatory about being right back (Em wasn’t listening) and pushed his way through the front rooms, into the packed corridor where people were in line for the restroom (someone was almost certainly having sex inside) and then passing by the kitchen. He paused to grab a beer, wrenching the cap off with the edge of the kitchen counter and making his way outside.

The backyard was pretty, with those cheap twinkling lights overhead, though beside him there was a potted plant filled with nothing but soil and the smoldering ends of blunts and cigarettes. Julian chuckled to himself, sipping his beer, and then smacked directly into someone.

“Oh my god, there you are!” exclaimed a sweaty, unfocused Cat, her hands rising immediately to Julian’s face and stroking it as if he were tactile, terry-clothed and soft. “Jules, baby,” she said, stumbling sideways until he caught her around the ribs. “Graves,” she exhaled, “is being an utter fucking pill.”

She gave him a dramatic, adorable pout, her fingers clutched in his shirt. She was wearing a lace top over some kind of bra thing, and he could feel the skin of her waist beneath his fingers.

“The thing is,” Cat announced, leaning in conspiratorially and wrenching away when another girl tried to take her arm, “he’s like, in love with me, right? But he also—” She hiccuped. “He hates me.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Julian said.

“No but he _does_ ,” Cat insisted, clinging unsteadily to his arm. “You know he was in love with Sam, right? And I was like… I mean… if you want.” She shrugged almost comically, toppling away from Julian again until he tugged her back. “I’m not—” Another hiccup. “I’m not the jealous _type_ , you know? Plus he always comes back to me in the end.” She made a face, expression contorting the sudden, cautionary way drunk girls sometimes did when they contemplated the possibility of tears. (“It’s just the ENORMITY of my EMOTIONS,” Sam had told Julian once, high as a kite and contemplating the distance to the ground from the rooftop pool.) “But it’s just like. Okay. He’s not the only one who misses her,” Cat continued babbling, “right? I’m here, too! It’s _bullshit_ ,” she sobbed, and then abruptly straightened, looking at him with an alarming clarity.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she announced, and marched directly to the door of the house. Julian turned to follow her, but someone stepped into his path, blocking him.

“So. You’re Julian Kinney,” commented a tall blonde, her hair chopped bluntly above her clavicle. Most people there were dressed casually, in jeans and various things like Cat’s that Sam had liked to call “going out tops,” but she wore a short, sleeveless silver-sequined dress that was blinding from certain angles, her pale legs long and Kate Moss-thin. She must have been freezing; not that she seemed to mind.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Julian said, moving to follow Cat, but the girl stepped sideways, swallowing up his view of her.

“Let her go,” the girl said disinterestedly. “She always gets like this. She’ll sleep it off and be fine in the morning.”

Ah. “You must be Renata,” Julian guessed.

Renata Stirling gave him a smile of confirmation as he noted, silently, that she wasn’t much more sober than Cat had been. “Welcome to my home,” she formally agreed, waving a hand around as if they currently stood in the parlor of Buckingham Palace. “Anyway, Cat’s a big girl. It’s Nero you need to handle.”

Julian insides warred briefly for a suitable reaction. “Is he okay?”

“Ugh. Baby boy’s such a fucking lightweight,” said Renata, drifting sideways before catching herself. “Once a buzzkill, always a buzzkill,” she added, eyeing the beer in Julian’s hand. “You need to drink that,” she informed him, unfocused eyes gleaming slightly. 

Julian knew better than to argue with someone that far gone. “Cheers,” he agreed, toasting her, and raised the beer to his lips for a sip. He intended that to be enough of an effort to escape, but then Renata caught his arm and tilted the bottle back further, the beer spilling over his mouth and saturating his shirt while he sputtered, choking, and raised his eyes to glare at her.

“Sorry,” Renata said insincerely. “I just hate people who don’t know how to play.”

Her lips curled up in a slow smile as he realized she’d leaned forward, stroking her thumb down his beer-infused chin.

 _My name is Julian Kinney,_ he thought, remembering Lam’s advice. _My sister is Sam Kinney, our mother is Destiny, I’m a student at Dives Conservatory, I came here with Lam Archman, I…_

He blinked.

_I…_

“Julian.” He felt the tug of his arm nearly detaching from his shoulder before he registered that he was being dragged in the opposite direction. “Come on.”

It was Graves, Julian registered distantly. From his periphery, he thought he saw Sam beckoning to him from afar; an old memory of her, like a carbon copy from a different night, late July, her skin all bare and goose-fleshed while she said in his ear, _Let’s go swimming Jules, what could possibly go wrong?_

“Oi, come on, Nero, what’s my one rule?” snapped Renata, the atmosphere around Julian’s head shifting again, as if a cold wind had just blown inside. “If you stay, I’ll tell you what I know about your sister,” she added in a coaxing murmur to Julian. “She used to play with me sometimes, did you know that?”

“What?” said Julian, falling to a halt.

“And she took my side, you know, when Andrew Iver went running to Archman,” Renata added, eyeing her fingernails while Graves gave Julian’s arm another pulse of pressure. “But Nero here doesn’t like to think about that, hm?” she said to Graves, lifting her steel-eyed gaze to his.

Graves, meanwhile, tensed with fury. “Don’t listen to her, Julian, come on—”

“Wait,” Julian said hazily, “just let me—”

“She doesn’t know shit,” Graves assured him, grip tightening. “Trust me, Sam wouldn’t have touched Renata with a ten-foot pole.”

To that, Renata’s eyes narrowed. “Shows what you know, Graves Nero,” she snorted back at him, though she didn’t try to stop him. Instead her unmoving silhouette, flimsy as a coked-out daydream, slowly disappeared from view as Graves dragged Julian around to the house’s narrow side yard.

There were no lights here, the bramble of ill-cared for plants scratching at Julian’s arm while a spider web caught on his fingers; the eerie sensation of something, nothing, taking hold. He spooked and shook himself, nearly crashing into Graves until they both came to a stop, only half of Graves’ face visible in the moonlight.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” Graves said, “and neither should you.”

He slumped against the side of the house, burying his head in his hands.

“I’m too drunk for this,” Graves said, his voice muffled.

“Too drunk for what?” 

“I’m gonna say things. Bad things.”

“About Cat?”

“About Sam. About me.” Graves looked up at Julian, his sickened expression fractured like the view of a crescent moon. 

“You?” Julian echoed, though Graves didn't answer, instead beginning restlessly to pace. “What’s the deal with Renata?” Julian asked, watching him, and Graves grimaced.

“She’s a siren.”

“Like my sister?” Julian asked, and Graves frowned.

“What?”

He sounded completely taken aback. “I thought—”

“Sam wasn’t a siren.” Graves paced again, then stopped. “I know Cat kissed you,” he said, and whatever Julian had been contemplating saying next, it fled his mind. His stomach dropped. “I also know that’s why you’ve been avoiding me.”

“Graves, I’m—” Julian’s insides warped, then roiled. What to say? Denial would surely be unconvincing. Julian settled on, “Graves, I’m sorry. I really wasn’t trying t-”

But he was cut off as Graves suddenly shot forward, twisting Julian around by the shoulders until his scapulae smacked flat against the wooden sideboards of the house. He could feel himself breathing hard, chest rising and falling against Graves’, a panicked, corporeal response of oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. A lock of Graves’ long hair had fallen into his eyes from the impact, his pulse against Julian’s thudding, echoing, inside the hollow chamber of Julian’s lungs.

Julian’s mouth parted of its own accord, Graves’ meeting his with a rush of desperation.

This time the taste was beer, a heady bass line, a new kind of darkness, secrecy and truth intertwined. This was unrecognizable to the same act with Cat, the rough scratch of Graves’ stubble scraping Julian’s mouth, the force in his kiss turning Julian yielding, malleable, open. Graves’ palm shifted, curving around his cheek, bitten nails digging into the soft underside of his jaw while Julian’s hand rested on the sharp edge of Graves’ hip, helpless. He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus, Julian thought desperately, I got soul but I’m not a soldier give my regards to soul and romance the spaceman says everybody look down, it’s 

all 

in 

your 

mind

“What’s it like when you have these… what did you call them?” the doctor at St. Dymphna’s asked, the bright white of his office suddenly unbearable to Julian’s sensitive eyes. “The… blurs, the episodes, like the stolen car?”

“It’s like I’m coming out of my cage,” some other Julian replied numbly, still unused to the drugs and the therapy, the way they both made him alternately exhausted and sick. “Like I’m trapped inside this useless body, this stupid personality. All these anxieties and apologies and fears and then something turns, like a key in a lock, and suddenly I’m… fine.”

“But you’re not fine,” the doctor reminded him patiently. “You hurt yourself badly. You nearly killed someone. And by your own admission, this is not the first time you’ve experienced this kind of manic behavior.”

“I know,” Julian said, who was either laughing or crying. “But it’s a release, you know what I mean? Like every now and then I remember I’m locked up in the body of some fucking idiot who’s too stupid to know what he’s capable of.”

“And what _are_ you capable of?”

“I don’t know. Something. Anything.” Everything. “I’m tired of being nothing,” Julian mumbled, committing the first crucial error of telling the truth. “Sam’s not here anymore, she won’t help me anymore, she’s gone. She’s the only person in the world who ever saw me, and without her, who will I even be?”

The doctor crossed one leg over the other, rising sharply to his feet. “I’m going to make a slight change to your dosage,” he said, “and we’ll get these moods under control,” but elsewhere, in real life, Julian’s nails were digging into Graves’ back and Graves voice was husky in his mouth, we shouldn’t, don’t stop, no wait I said we can’t.

We can’t, we can’t, “don’t do this,” “I’m sorry,” another blur and then a tear, a rip, the bright lights inside the ambulance, the sudden clarity that this, this right here, was why. This was why he could not be close to Graves, could not look him in his green eyes, because something about Graves Nero made the pieces of Julian Kinney come loose.

“Mr. Kinney, bear in mind that I’ve been strongly advised against permitting your departure,” said the doctor in his head. “Make no mistake, I’m granting you this leave of absence with the expectation you’ll return promptly after your sister’s funeral. Your treatment here remains unfinished, and given your recent trauma—”

“Fuck,” Julian swore aloud, the taste of bile rising to the surface of his throat as he felt Graves pull away from him, disappearing along with the fractures of his past.

“It’s not your fault,” Sam whispered in his ear, and his head swam.

It was only a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs: "Imploding the Mirage," "Human," and, of course, some hints at iconic song that happens to be the very last thing I sang while in the company of other human people (she says, pandemically)


	7. Swimming Through Sick Lullabies

Meredith Thurston, formerly Meredith Stirling and before that Meredith Dawkins until resuming the use of her maiden name, knocked politely on the front door of the house’s dilapidated Victorian porch. While Meredith was in possession of a key, she did feel that a modicum of privacy was owed, even to one’s recalcitrant stepdaughter. Even if one’s recalcitrant stepdaughter was something of an overgrown delinquent, which was unfortunately not that surprising as far as plausible outcomes for bardship went.

Once upon a time, Professor Thurston, Dean of Students at Dives Conservatory and occasional ensemble advisor for the select few when the opportunity arose, had what people generally like to call a “promising future.” She was among the more talented bards at Dives, having been first classically trained by her mother—non-magical, but rigorous nonetheless—and then attending a competitive performing arts boarding school for not only voice but also ballet. The Meredith Thurston of yore was also a knockout, which was not to speak ill of her at present (she would simply not allow it and anyway, Pilates was magic enough on its own) but certainly that sort of praise was reserved for the flush of the ingenue, wide-eyed and as yet unaware what the future would bring her. Meredith would not have imagined herself twice widowed at this age with no progeny to speak of aside from her stepdaughter, nor had she imagined she’d still be sleeping with the same man she detested nearly as much as she helplessly loved while still in attendance at the conservatory she’d once been desperate to leave. If anything, her stepdaughter ought to give her more credit for being so understanding of her circumstances. If anyone could know how difficult it was to detach oneself from the environment of Dives, Meredith would be the first.

As Renata was not answering the doorbell, Meredith withdrew her key, unlocking the front door and stepping into the house. “Hello?” she called, waiting, but a sweep of the premises suggested there would be no response. The house was in utter disarray, all of Renata’s possessions (meaning: her father’s belongings, plus the furniture Meredith had bought) overturned, singed, spilled on, or otherwise compromised. The books, thankfully, were unharmed for the most part, though the vintage area rug with which Renata had been so besotted on the day of its purchase was positively battered with muddied footprints and the faint hint of marijuana. Meredith made a mental note to have the rug and upholstery deep-cleaned before heading up the stairs, stepping over the dozing form of some still-intoxicated reveler.

“Renata,” she called, knocking twice on her stepdaughter’s bedroom door before opening it. Unsurprisingly, Renata was in bed. Even more unsurprisingly, she was not alone. “Darling, please,” Meredith sighed, stepping into the room and hoping one of her students did not arise from such an incriminating position. “I know you can hear me.”

Renata cracked one eye while the body to her left, female, stretched upright, unapologetically topless. On her right, a very young man seemed to awaken with some sense of decorum, clinging hastily to the duvet. Thankfully Meredith did not recognize either one of Renata’s companions, though that did not mean much.

“Mother,” said Renata.

“Good morning,” replied Meredith evenly.

She had first met Renata when the girl was perhaps seven years old, motherless and heartsick and unsure of herself, like a poorly dressed colt on unsteady legs. Meredith had never wanted to be a mother herself and was grateful that Max Stirling, Renata’s father, was already significantly advanced in age—or had been, until she learned of Renata’s existence. Thankfully Max was uninterested in anything much beyond the recreational in terms of the marital bed, as Meredith’s first husband, James Dawkins, had also been. (James was actually older than Max, but still very spry when it counted.) 

Ultimately Meredith was fond of Renata in a distant sort of way, but then Max passed and Meredith was forced to be less distantly fond, more intimately disciplinary, which was not something that came easily. Despite her career of educating young musicians once her own had come to a somewhat unremarkable end, Meredith was not very skilled with children. To nurture talent or ambition was not comparable to responsible maternal care, and Meredith, who enjoyed lively parties, weekend benders, and frequent casual sex—hence the attraction of her husbands and paramours, all aging men who’d been willing to foot the bill for an exciting young wife—was not what one might call a natural. 

In Meredith’s defense, she had done her best with what she was given. Most of Meredith’s parenting of Renata would take place during the terrible ages of thirteen to eighteen, which are, as anyone knows, probably too late to make much of a meaningful difference, and unfortunately there were so few ways to be sure that a person of Renata’s temperament would not grow to misuse her abilities. In Renata’s case—a girl both fatherless and motherless and claiming only, at best, an ambivalent stepmother who couldn’t quite sort out what to do with a screaming teenage girl outside of having a drink and going to bed early—there were not many promising outcomes. The best Meredith could offer was her lack of judgment; admittedly, had she Renata’s singular persuasion, she’d happily awake each day in bed with a pair of nubile inamoratos before stumbling idly downstairs to smoke a morning bowl. 

Ah, to be twenty-something again. (Twenty-four, Meredith was pretty sure. Yes, Renata was twenty-four. My, how time had flown.)

“Do you need something?” Renata said disinterestedly as the boy to her right began hastily dressing. Meredith smoothed down the edge of the duvet, taking a seat at her stepdaughter’s feet and trying not to let her attention drift too tellingly to the hurricane of garments on the floor. 

“Can’t I just come visit you from time to time?” Meredith said. “I do own the house.”

Renata rolled her eyes. “Which you bought with my father’s money.”

“Renata, you know full well my first husband had the money,” Meredith reminded her. “Your father I married for his cock.”

The girl to the left choked on a laugh as Renata glared at Meredith, then sighed. 

“Am I supposed to sit through a lecture?” Renata asked. “Because I do have company, in case you haven’t noticed,” she pointed out, gesturing to the already fleeing young man and the girl who looked as if she needed another hit of something post haste. 

This, Meredith thought, was the difference between herself and her stepdaughter. Meredith may have a similar talent for debauchery, but she was much more focused and ambitious. Renata had Meredith’s proficiency, but not her arrogance. 

“You’re letting him win,” Meredith said quietly, knowing that much would bring things more sharply into focus.

She was right. Renata glared at her two bedmates, mouth tightening. “Out,” she said.

The girl slid out of the bed fully nude—beautiful, Meredith had to admit, longing once again for the blissful elasticity her skin possessed in her twenties—while the boy departed frantically, shoes in hand with a backward, apologetic glance at Meredith. Perhaps she ought to have recognized him.

“He’s a fourth year,” Renata said in answer to Meredith’s silent pondering.

“An unexceptional one, clearly,” Meredith replied.

“Not everywhere,” Renata replied with a smirk, the two of them exchanging a conspiratorial glance.

“My congratulations,” Meredith acknowledged, “but the point stands, Renata. No matter how many of these lovely little soirées you throw, it won’t be enough.” She reached out to rest her hand on her stepdaughter’s calf. “It’s not real, you know. The magic.”

“I know.”

“They do not love you.”

“I don’t want them to.”

“Are you sure?”

Renata turned away, and Meredith sighed.

“You really must leave,” she said, and Renata’s brow furrowed.

“Are you banishing me now?”

“My goodness, how dramatic. Of course not.” Meredith adjusted her skirt. “But whatever you hope to find here, you will not. And the world is much too big to suffer like this for nothing.”

“It’s not for nothing,” Renata said stubbornly. She was very stubborn, had always been, far more so than Meredith, who was extraordinarily adaptable. (And, again, flexible.) “And if the world is so big, why don’t _you_ leave?”

This again. “I do have a job, Renata—”

“Oh stop it, Mother. You have an affair,” Renata said bitterly. “It’s not the same thing.”

Once again Meredith regretted mentioning anything about Edward to Renata, who would always consider her choice of partner a betrayal to some degree; even more so now. “My reasons for remaining here and yours simply can’t be the same,” Meredith said, choosing not to argue a point so thoroughly ludicrous. “I’m a middle-aged woman who couldn’t cut it on the stage and ran off with my wealthiest patron just so I’d never have to admit my inadequacies. You’re young, you’re beautiful.” She slid forward on the bed to take Renata’s chin in hand. “And for as long as you remain here,” Meredith murmured, “Andrew Iver will still have power over you.”

She expected Renata’s expression to contort itself, but it didn’t. “I don’t have much longer,” she said listlessly. “Sam told me I wouldn’t wait long.”

“Sam Kinney?” Meredith’s grip must have tightened, because Renata twisted away.

“Yes, of course Sam Kinney—”

“What did she tell you?” Meredith asked, her chest fluttering with the little spasm it always gave when she thought of Sam Kinney. “What do you mean not much longer? What did she s-”

“Oh my god, Mom, I’m not dying,” said Renata with a groan, reverting to thirteen again as Meredith’s lungs expanded with relief. “She just promised me he’d get what he deserved, that’s all,” she said with a shrug.

“Renata.” Meredith’s grip slackened. “I am not sure that he will.”

“He will. Sam told me.”

“Sam…” Meredith hesitated. “That sort of thing is not within Sam’s purview. She might have just been trying to make you feel better, or—”

“I met her brother last night,” Renata said, and Meredith stopped. “I thought you said he was special,” Renata added accusingly, as if this had all been some sort of tactical decision to cruelly and disappointingly mislead her.

“I said he’s rare,” Meredith corrected, because he was certainly that, among other things. “But as for whether he’s reached his full potential—”

“He’s ordinary,” Renata cut in tightly. “Disappointingly ordinary, just like the rest.”

She glanced down at her hands and Meredith sighed again. What a pity such extraordinary power could lie within such a common flaw: the loneliness of a girl who would forever be without the love she so desperately desired, burdened only with the falsity of lust.

Meredith wondered if it had been a mistake to allow Renata to become so attached to Sam, although there was no real preventing it. Sam was precisely the kind of person Renata found fascinating, though potentially there was no real way _not_ to be a little fascinated by Sam.

Meredith herself had first met Sam Kinney during a period that Dives liked to call recruitment, though 'collection' was perhaps a more accurate term. Sam had run away from home in January and Meredith had tracked her down sometime in May, by which time Sam had already begun working at a seedy sort of club outside New Orleans. Meredith had held up a crisp hundred dollar bill, tucking it into Sam’s décolletage and requesting a private audience. At the time Sam was wearing a wig, a cotton candy pink bob with blunt-cut bangs, with tiny diamonds glued, not unappealingly, beside her lovely eyes.

“Tell me how I die,” Meredith said after she took a seat in one of the club’s private rooms, and Sam Kinney blinked.

“What?”

“You’re an oracle,” Meredith said as Sam looked over her shoulder, contemplating whether to call for security. “Aren’t you?”

“Lady, I’m a dancer,” Sam said, eyes skating over Meredith’s Chanel tweed and apparently determining her payout likely worth the eccentricity of the customer. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do if you pay,” she said, propping her platform-stilettoed foot onto the booth beside Meredith’s head.

“Very well,” Meredith said with a glance, removing another crisp hundred and tucking it into the garter belt secured around Sam’s thigh. “Tell me how I die.”

“I—” Sam’s eyes flickered, the youth in them now unmistakable despite the heavy lashes, the makeup she’d caked on, the pornographic stance she’d adopted for the conversation. “You don’t want to hear that,” she said eventually, retracting her (clearly spectacular) leg to a more neutral stance while they spoke.

“Why? Is it soon? Or is it painful?” In reality, Meredith did not want to know. But convincing the Dives board to take on a student with no training had been an arduous trial, so it was better to have confirmation than not.

“No. And no.” Sam, conscious of standing still, started to sway her hips to the music's thudding bass, lifting Meredith’s hand to rest it on her hip. 

“You’re too young for me,” Meredith said, obliging without refusal, though also without enthusiasm.

“I hear that a lot,” Sam agreed, dropping down until her mostly-bare ass hovered above her platform heels.

“No, really,” Meredith told her, watching Sam slither back upright. “I like my lovers older. And I don’t just mean older than you,” she added pointedly, to which Sam grinned, tightening Meredith’s hands on her hips before smoothing them up to her waist. “Though there’s quite a window between your age and mine.”

“You’re going to end up with him,” Sam said, forming Meredith’s hands to cup around her breasts like the seashell bra on the Little Mermaid while she moved to the song, some heavy hip-hop beat. “The guy you’re seeing, the younger one. You never do manage to let him go.”

“I’m not…” Admittedly, Meredith was a little breathless, though ‘younger’ was not so apt a description. It was five years, maybe, at most. “I’m not _seeing_ him, I’m—”

“Fucking him, I know. You’ll keep fucking him. Forever.” Sam writhed like a snake until Meredith’s hands cupped her youthful ass (ah, Meredith had thought again, such envy). “So whether you admit now that you love him,” Sam posed neutrally, “or you never admit it, doesn’t matter. There won’t be anyone after him.”

“That’s worse than telling me my death,” Meredith said with a grimace, and Sam laughed.

“Fine,” she agreed, swinging one leg over Meredith’s lap until she’d straddled her gently, almost floating weightless above her. “You want to hear how you die?” she asked, leaning forward until the tips of her pink bob brushed Meredith’s cheek, her hips gyrating above Meredith’s tweed skirt. Sam hummed a little to the song under her breath, the feel of the vibration uncannily perforating Meredith’s own sense of self until she couldn’t quite remember what she’d come here for. (Thank god she had not sent a male administrator for this particular collection.)

“Yes.” Meredith swallowed, holding herself forcefully still as Sam continued to dance, her movements meticulously serpentine and controlled.

“Heart attack,” Sam murmured eventually, as Meredith’s pulse obligingly thudded. “You’ve got a long way, though. You’ll outlive almost everyone who ever wronged you, which is nice.” She opened her mouth again, but then abruptly paused, leaning back to frown at Meredith. “Wait, you’re from _there_ ,” she said, suddenly looking awed and almost childlike. “You die in the same place I do.”

“You know how _you_ die?” Meredith asked, shivering internally to think of such a dismal curse, and Sam shook her head.

“No, not… _how_ , not exactly. But I’ve seen it. Glimpses of it.” Sam drew away, the dance forgotten, her own breath quickening. “Wait, so you know where it is? The place with the lake, and the… the cliffs, and…?”

That was the way Meredith would always remember Sam Kinney. Pink-haired and scantily clad, her eyes wide, her life and her future aligning as the lights overhead swung patterns across her youthful skin. She was so vibrant for a girl who was already half a ghost; Meredith would never forget the terror of it, the tantalizing way it struck them both. Not because she would not collect her students from similar places, some worse even than this one, but because she would never again witness curiosity so powerful. How could she dismiss it when even this girl—young and beautiful and yet to discover the reach of her immeasurable talent—would go so willingly towards her own ending, unable to deny the pull?

Moth, meet flame. “I’m here to make you an offer, Samara,” Meredith had said, and Sam had given her a look of recognition tinged with relief, a long unanswered question suddenly finding roots.

How could anyone not be intrigued?

Meredith shook herself of the memory and returned her attention to Renata, who was staring gloomily at the opposite wall. The reality of the day was setting in, unfortunately, ending the evening’s high and returning her to a state of vulnerable consciousness. Meredith knew the feeling all too well.

“Renata,” Meredith said, smoothing her hair behind one ear. “You do know the best revenge is living well.”

Renata turned to look blindly at Meredith; through her.

“No,” she said. “The best revenge is revenge.”

Ah. So today would not be the day, then. Meredith leaned forward, kissing Renata’s forehead, and then rose to her feet, passing a glance over her shoulder.

“I love you, you know,” Meredith said.

“I know,” Renata replied blankly.

“I wish it could be enough.”

Renata turned, glassy-eyed, to look at her. “Me too,” she said.

Meredith smiled sort of half-convincingly. 

“Next Sunday? I’ll send someone this week to clean the rug.”

“If you want.”

“Okay.” She blew a kiss to Renata, exchanging a parting glance with the naked girl who was now returning from the kitchen with a bowl of cereal in hand, and then she stepped into the driver’s seat of her vintage convertible, returning to campus with her day’s errands fulfilled.

It wasn’t that teaching wasn’t satisfying to some degree. Some of her students showed immense progress; the Archmans were a given for obvious reasons, but even some of her more unlikely finds—Olympia Stax, Priscilla Ransom, perhaps even that odd little recluse Em Wilder—would find paths toward success, if not true fame. Graves Nero in particular had both the mindset and the skillset to go far where Meredith herself had not, and he was also not the abominable leech that Andrew Iver had proven himself to be. Unlike Iver, Nero would not blame his failures on others; he was diligent and conscientious, grateful when he needed to be and ruthless when it was called for. 

Meredith had done her best not to have favorites, but some were inevitable. Graves Nero was the rare prodigy who would not squander what he had, and she knew it to be fact the way she hadn’t with any of the others.

“Graves is going to be a star,” Sam had informed Meredith in her office just before the start of her third year. Meredith had not been aware it would be the last time they spoke.

“ _You’re_ going to be a star,” Meredith said, positive then that she had some decent skill with predictions, but Sam shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so.” She looked out the window. “Lately I’m starting to resent my destiny,” she said, and gave a little scoff-laugh. “Destiny. I’ve always resented her.”

Meredith waited for her to continue, which she did.

“I do see more than just death,” Sam remarked, turning back to Meredith. “I see life, too. And I’m not sure I like where mine is going.”

This was precisely the sort of emotionally complicated thing with which Meredith had no skill. “Miss Kinney, if you’re in need of counseling—”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Sam said, frowning as she pondered it. “I just… I’m starting to think I misunderstood something. I misread the signs,” she said. “Badly. I had everything wrong, and I think I… need to leave. Or something.” She slipped down in the chair, shaking her head as she stared out the window. “I know I can’t outrun it, but I have to try.”

“Sam,” Meredith attempted, but Sam exhaled impatiently, already unwilling to hear whatever would come next (even if Meredith could have sorted out what it should be, which she hadn't).

“My brother,” Sam said. “Is there any way to send for him?”

“You know very well the guidelines for visitors,” said Meredith, misunderstanding.

“No, I mean… can he study here, too? Because I think he has to.”

Ah. A delicate subject matter. Legacies were common demands by those related to board members, but Sam Kinney was not of a particularly… _favorable_ line, so to speak. 

“Your brother is already well beyond the age of Dives admittance,” Meredith tried to explain with a semblance of sympathy, as if it pained her to refuse. “His talents, if he has them, are dormant.” In her defense, this was not a lie. It was true that some people developed their abilities in their early twenties as opposed to their late teens, when most bards came into their abilities, but the probability of success was so uncommon as to nullify any necessity for education. Likely their skills would remain unrealized, if evidence of them manifested at all.

“He has them,” Sam said firmly. “Or he _will_ have them, or I don’t know.” She shifted listlessly. “If anything happens to me, promise me you’ll find him.”

“What’s going to happen to you?” Meredith asked her, noticing a new, withdrawn look to her face; some sort of sallowness around her skin that hadn’t been there before. “Sam,” she said, but Sam had already shoved her chair back, erupting to her feet.

“I have to tell him,” she said, disappearing through Meredith’s office door.

The same door she opened now, jumping to find that it wasn’t unoccupied.

“Jesus, Edward,” Meredith said, heart pounding ( _heart attack_ , Sam’s lascivious whisper echoed in her ear) as she pressed the heel of her hand into her chest. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Edward Archman turned to look at her in his usual bland, distracted sort of way.

“I need a book,” he said, as Meredith tossed her keys onto the bookshelf and closed the door behind her.

Edward Archman was the bane of her existence, the most talented composer she’d ever met and also possibly one of the worst teachers the board had ever hired. Unfortunately his prior renown had made him a staple at Dives, and his marriage to the daughter of a former board president cemented it. He would remain here eternally, a perpetual pain in Meredith’s side, getting his way nearly every time they disagreed and vaulting his favorites up from the bottom like daisies.

“What book?” she asked impatiently.

“The orpheus book. I need it for Julian Kinney,” he clarified, as if Meredith might idiotically wonder who else that book was suitable for. “He seems to think he conjured a projection of Stella and not an imprint.”

A tumble of greying hair was curling beside Edward’s temple, and Meredith stepped toward him with a sigh, fighting the urge to brush it back. “It’s not clear whether an orpheus produces a mere projection of the deceased or an imprint,” she reminded him irritably. “We’ve already discussed this. I know you want it to have been her, but—”

“What? No, Meredith, this isn’t about what I want.” Edward blinked at her. “She spoke to me.”

“So?”

“So that’s clearly not a projection. How would Julian Kinney know what to make my wife say?”

Meredith grimaced. “Are you sure you didn’t… _imagine_ it, or…?”

“I’m not an idiot, Meredith.” 

“Yes you are,” she muttered, “and you were also under an immense amount of stress at the time, don’t you think?”

Edward looked bewildered. “How?”

“You’re telling me that seeing your dead wife after nearly twenty-one years wasn’t stressful?”

“I see my wife all the time. My children look exactly like her.”

Unbelievable how literal he could be. “That’s different. The point is you may be saddling him with more than he can handle.”

“Who?”

“Julian Kinney,” Meredith said with an exasperated sigh. “Have you already forgotten?”

“What is he being saddled with?”

“He sees his dead sister, Edward!” Meredith snapped, having been the one to insist Julian ought to stay back with the other first years instead of being forced into a program for which he was alarmingly unprepared. She did not envy him the task of managing his own trauma while also learning the advanced bard curriculum at breakneck speed, but she had been overruled. “You think it won’t torment him to believe it’s actually her?”

“But it is her,” Edward said.

“It _might_ be her—”

“It’s her.”

“You can’t know that,” Meredith grumbled, “that’s the whole point of—”

“Is this because of Stella?” Edward cut in. 

“What?”

“You’re upset because I spoke to Stella.” He sounded certain, as if he’d reasoned it out for himself finally, which he so obviously had not.

“Why would I possibly—” Meredith broke off, stopping herself before she lost her temper any more than she already had. “Why on earth would I care whether you’ve spoken to your dead wife?”

“You know what she was,” Edward said matter-of-factly. “You can’t possibly think I’m still mourning her.”

“Again, Edward, I haven’t the slightest idea wh-”

“Meredith.” Edward gave her a clinical look of scrutiny. “I was with my wife for two years, if that. I’ve been with you for nearly a decade.”

Meredith felt her cheeks color with mortification. “We’re not _together_ , Edward,” she reminded him, which he blatantly ignored.

“If you think I still have feelings for her—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, that’s enough,” Meredith said, exasperatedly storming over to the bookshelf behind her desk and plucking the first edition study on orpheus bards from somewhere near the middle. “Here,” she said, tossing it to him. “Tell Julian Kinney whatever you’d like. And tell your belligerent son to cooperate,” she added with an unexpected snarl. She had never been opposed to either of the Archmans, though it was difficult not to occasionally conflate father with son. “If I hear from Nero one more time that Calamity hasn’t shown up to rehearsals—”

“You know Calamity is ill,” Edward said evenly, already parsing through the book. 

“That’s not the reason for his chronic truancy and you _know_ it—”

“Odd, isn’t it, to have an oracle and an orpheus in the same family? The Kinney family must be genetically very blessed.” 

Edward wasn’t listening, the absolute ghoul. “They’re half-siblings, Edward. They share the same mother. And as I was saying about Calamity—”

“Well, then the mother is even more remarkable, isn’t she?” Edward exclaimed, pausing to scour a passage in the book.

Meredith, who had met Destiny Kinney and did not think ‘remarkable’ was nearly the right word for her, wanted badly to change the subject. “I suppose so, but if you’d focus on _your son_ —”

“He’s epileptic. Or something. And maybe it’s not genetic,” Edward added, looking up with a frown. “It could be conditioned, or environmental? Trauma-based?”

“Epileptic _or something_?” Meredith echoed, too aghast with the subject at hand to continue speculating academically as to the origins of what made a bard. “Edward, once again, you can’t just diagnose your own son with a mysterious ailment and assume I’ll let all of his actions slide! You _already_ get away with having favorites—”

“Calamity is an excellent musician. What issue is it to me if he doesn’t go to class? His work is exemplary and as you well know, regular attendance does not factor much into a bard’s success.” Edward was already busily flipping through the pages of the book again, only half-present for the absurdity of his own argument. 

“Edward,” Meredith said through gritted teeth. “Make. Calamity. Cooperate.”

Edward looked up, mind traveling a long way to find the source of her frustration.

“I can’t make Calamity do anything,” he said with an impatient frown. “I don’t know where he gets it from—”

“Truly a mystery,” muttered Meredith to herself.

“—but Julian Kinney is in Calamity’s ensemble, is he not? It appears they’re friends,” Edward said, determining after a moment, “I’ll speak to him.”

He turned, apparently determining he’d made enough of an effort in conversation. Meredith didn’t stop him, but he doubled back when he reached the door, returning to where she stood to pull her in for a kiss she wanted to reject, but didn’t.

“My wife told me she still hated me,” he said to her lips, sounding perfectly unfazed. “Had I the opportunity to answer, I might have replied that little had changed to alter my reciprocation.”

“I _also_ hate you, you know,” Meredith grumbled.

“No you don’t,” Edward said firmly, kissing her again and then striding to the door with all the certainty of a man who would wake up in her bed come sunrise. 

Asshole. He’d always been a very interesting lunatic, which was something she hadn’t known until later in life was a quality she couldn’t resist.

Moth, she thought resignedly, meet flame. Speaking of resenting one’s destiny.

Her memory answered her thoughts of Sam Kinney with her introduction to Julian Kinney, who at the time was standing alone at his sister’s funeral, his voice shaking around the words _I got soul, but I’m not a soldier_.

 _There he is_ , Sam’s image had mouthed to her, flickering in the form of something either very real or not nearly real enough. 

Okay, Samara, Meredith had thought. Very well, I give in.

* * *

Julian woke to find a shadow cast over his face from the window. Lam, it seemed, had decided to rifle through his personal notes, including the drunken one he’d written out after he’d gotten home the night before. It was meandering, unpoetic, and stream of (very limited) consciousness: _Now I'm falling asleep and she's calling a cab while he's having a smoke and she's taking a drag—_

“I like it,” Lam commented. His broken arm was no longer in the sling, though he kept it tucked in close to him, like a wounded wing. “Very pathetic,” he said with too-awake delight.

“Please,” Julian muttered, “do not do this right now.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. This.” Visions of Graves and Cat swam in Julian’s head, which in turn pounded with dehydration. After Graves had left him in the side yard, he’d spat up bile, returned to the house for several shots of tequila until he felt sufficiently poisoned, and then rejoined Em’s hawk-eyed watch over Olympia, only to find that Cat and Graves had made up somehow, or perhaps were both so drunk they’d forgotten they were fighting. Graves’ hands, so recently on Julian’s face, were toying with the belt loop on Cat’s jeans, and Cat’s lips, so recently pressed to Julian’s, were staining the side of Graves’ neck. Intoxication mixed with repulsion, churning deliriously into want. Cat’s lips around Graves’ joint, Graves’ hands touching Cat’s bare skin, the doctor’s voice in Julian’s head. _Julian, you aren’t well._

“I’m sick,” Julian said.

“False,” said Lam. “You’re hungover and depressed.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Exactly,” Lam trumpeted at an excessively hurtful volume. “We’re in the prime of our lives, Jules!”

Just then there was a knock at the door, which was unusual. Owing to the fact that Julian was mildly awkward and Lam was widely ostracized, they did not generally welcome company. They glanced at each other in abject confusion at the prospect of someone wanting to visit in the light of day. 

“Were you noisy again last night?” Julian asked Lam.

“I certainly have no idea,” scoffed Lam, crossing the room as Julian struggled to sit upright.

Lam swung the door open, revealing Graves Nero in the doorframe, and then slammed the door shut again.

“Lam,” Graves said in a tired voice. “Open the door.”

“Do _not_ open the door,” Julian hissed to him, which was a mistake.

“Hm, interesting,” said Lam, and opened the door. “What?”

“I need to talk to Julian,” said Graves. 

“Please hold,” replied Lam, and shut the door again. “Jules, Nero wants to talk to you.”

“I can hear you,” said Graves through the door, which Lam ignored.

“What happened?” Lam asked Julian.

“Nothing,” Julian said.

“Looks like something,” Lam said, unconvinced. “Since when do you have a problem with Nero?”

“I don’t have a problem with him, I just didn’t want t-”

Lam opened the door to scour Graves’ expression for a moment, contemplating him. “What happened?” he asked Graves.

“I left my car at the party last night,” Graves said with obviously forced patience. “I was going to ask Julian if he wanted to come for a walk and some breakfast while I picked it up.”

“That’s cute,” gushed Lam, tossing the door shut again and turning to Julian. “What did you do?” he said without inflection.

“Nothing,” growled Julian, who wanted very badly not to be alone with Graves Nero right now, though he also wanted very badly not to explain that desperation to Lam. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to provide me with an excuse?”

“Not likely,” Lam agreed, and opened the door. “Julian will meet you downstairs in ten minutes,” he informed a visibly frustrated Graves.

“Lam, he’s sitting right there, can I j-”

“Goodbye,” Lam sang, and shut the door again, this time returning to sit across from Julian on his bed. “So,” he said with apparent curiosity, “you’re avoiding Nero. Why?”

“I’m n-”

“You are,” Lam corrected. “Why?”

“I’m j-” Lam glared at him, and he stopped. “I don’t know. He gives me a weird feeling,” muttered Julian, rubbing his temples.

“Sort of like an uncanny recollection of your most vulnerable memories?” Lam guessed, and Julian blinked, taken aback.

“Wait, how did y-”

“That’s what Nero does,” Lam said with a shrug. “He’s some type of empath or something, the kind who can bring past memories to the surface. Like a reverse oracle.” He scrutinized Julian for a moment before adding, “Whatever you feel, he feels it, too.”

“How many kinds of bards _are_ there?” asked Julian, not wanting to admit that was a sickening possibility to consider.

“Bard’s a very generic term,” Lam replied. “Everyone is technically something different. The really weird ones like you have names,” he added. “But most don’t.”

“What about you?” asked Julian.

“Don’t be silly Jules, we don’t have time for the enigma that is _me_ ,” retorted Lam, obnoxiously. “What did you do last night?”

Julian reached for his jeans, pulling them on with a grunt of annoyance. “Why do you continue to assume I did something?”

In answer, Lam rose to his feet, plucking Julian’s notebook from the desk and reading aloud, “ _Jealousy turning saints into the sea, swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis—_ ”

“Okay, I get it,” Julian sighed, snatching the notebook back from him. “Can you not go through my stuff, please?”

“You’ve only got, like, one stuff,” Lam said. “I don’t think this counts as going through it.”

“Okay, fine, whatever, can you just _not_ —”

“A thought, though,” Lam cut in abruptly. “My sister and her beloved Casanova are not known for their fidelity.”

He gave Julian a sweeping glance, which Julian fervently hoped produced no results.

“Fine,” Lam said irritably, “don’t tell me.” 

He flopped backwards onto his bed, closing his eyes, and Julian sighed. Not that Lam was ever in a _good_ mood, but this was identifiably a bad one.

“Lam, I’m not trying t-”

“Go,” Lam said, eyes still closed. “You’re going to be late.”

“Lam, I’m just—”

“Julian, I really don’t see the purpose of this,” Lam said. “My arm aches and I’m tired. Get out of here so I can sleep.”

“Does it really?” Julian asked, glancing at Lam's cast with concern. “Because if you need me to bring you back something for the pain—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Get out,” snarled Lam, causing Julian to concede he’d clearly not win whatever battle this was for the moment. He snatched up his wallet and phone with a sigh, pulling the door shut behind him.

Graves, as instructed, was waiting on the knoll outside when Julian approached. He wore his hair piled high on his head, tight curls escaping near the base of his neck, and a pair of reflective sunglasses that flashed when he turned towards Julian.

“Figured we could walk into collegetown, grab a bite, then walk to my car,” he said. “Sound good?”

“Is there a reason you thought I should be the one to come with you?” asked Julian, with perhaps a more accusing tone than strictly necessary.

Graves sighed, scrubbing at his unshaven face and lifting his sunglasses onto his head, beckoning for Julian to follow. “Come on.”

Julian unwillingly—or half-willingly—complied, dragging a little as Graves started to talk.

“So, obviously I got carried away last night,” Graves said. “I was drunk and pissed off at Renata, and Cat was being difficult, so—”

“So you thought it would be best to kiss me?” Julian cut in bluntly, and Graves grimaced.

“So I let myself do something I should have told you I wanted to do a long time ago, yes,” Graves finished.

Julian, who didn’t know what to say to that, said nothing.

“You have to understand, being around you is like—” Graves broke off, wincing. “It’s like having her back.”

Something in Julian sank and twisted, shriveling up like he’d been dipped in acid. “I’m not Sam, Graves.”

Graves nodded hastily. “I know that, I know, but—”

“And if my sister somehow got between you and Cat before—”

“No, she didn’t. I…” Graves trailed off, glancing away as they walked. “Cat and I aren’t, like. Exclusive,” he managed after a second’s pause. “I mean we’re _with_ each other, definitely, but there have been… other people.”

 _It’s only you, Catastrophe Archman. Always. It’s always been you for me_ , Julian heard Graves say in his thoughts.

_Even when it isn’t?_

_Especially then._

“The point is, she told me she kissed you and I was… Well, I wanted to, too. Also, I mean. I don’t know.” Graves was babbling a bit, which was so unlike him Julian nearly fought a laugh despite his irritation. “You’re just… you have this way about you, and it’s—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not doing this right,” he muttered.

“I honestly have no idea what you’re doing,” Julian told him, and Graves sighed out a laugh.

“I'm saying saying, if you want to… well, anything. With either of us, I mean, or. Well, it’s…” 

Julian stared at him. “You’re asking if I want to be involved with both of you?”

“Not _involved_ , exactly, but—”

“Oh, I see. You’re saying I can fuck you, and I can fuck Cat, but you’ll keep fucking each other regardless,” Julian synthesized for him, surprised by how angry he found himself, and Graves set his jaw, unflinching.

“You make it sound so... indecent,” Graves said.

“Was I supposed to make it sound romantic?” Julian asked, coming to a halt as they reached the edge of campus. “Because no offense, but it’s not.”

“Fine.” Graves turned to face him. “Look, I can’t leave her.”

“I’m not asking you to leave her, I’m just—”

“I don’t care what you’re asking or not asking, I’m telling you: I can’t leave her. There’s no other choice for me.” Graves was somber when he said it, but unapologetic. “And I’m not saying you _have_ to get involved with either of us, or—god, I’m not a total narcissist.” He slid Julian a wince of a glance. “I’m just saying that if anyone should be privy to our… curiosities, let's say.” Another sidelong glance. “I know you’re attracted to Cat. I know you like her. And no offense, but people who aren’t at least a little into me don’t usually kiss me like you did,” he added with a glimpse of his usual _you like me_ charm.

That was probably a fair assessment, so Julian didn’t bother combating it. “I honestly didn’t think you’d remember,” he admitted.

“I’ll be lucky if I ever forget,” Graves said.

They walked on in silence, reaching the beginnings of collegetown. It was a nice day, unquestionably autumn. Full of saturated colors and impending rot.

“I don’t think I’m up for complicated right now,” Julian said eventually, and Graves laughed.

“Funnily enough, this is us keeping things simple,” he said. “Not that I expect most people to understand.”

“So, with my sister…?” Julian said, and Graves stopped walking again.

“Look, I loved Sam,” he said slowly, more to his feet than to Julian. “Okay? I loved her, I was in love with her, but she made it clear she didn’t love me.”

Based on what Lam had told him, Julian wasn’t so sure. But he didn’t interrupt when Graves continued, “When I say you remind me of her, what I mean is you make me feel the way she made me feel. Like, I don’t know, like I was real. Like, _you’re_ real, unpretentious.” He gave Julian another of his persuasively charming smiles. “Which I guess is me admitting I’m not always so good with authenticity.”

“You do hide a lot,” Julian pointed out gingerly.

“Well.” Graves gestured to the bagel shop. “Maybe I could change that, yeah?”

Julian doubted a bagel would do it, but there wasn’t much point ignoring his empty stomach.

“Sure,” he said, letting Graves take the lead.

* * *

Julian would have forgotten his “appointment” with Archman had Cat not reminded him over breakfast, which was the first time they’d seen each other since the party. Presumably Graves had told her of the conversation they’d had—ultimately spanning the hour and a half it had taken to get Graves’ car from Renata’s house—but she made no reference to it.

“Hey,” she said, kissing Julian’s cheek hello, which was new. “Don’t you have a meeting with my father this morning?”

“Fuck,” said Julian, scrambling to his feet and, mortifyingly, giving Cat’s hip a squeeze in his attempt to express something along the lines of “thanks, see you later, bye.” In his head it had been a slightly more urbane as far as intimate gestures, like perhaps he’d taken her hand or something (no, that wouldn’t be better, fuck) but it was what it was and he was late.

“Ah, Mr. Kinney,” said Archman, looking up from the progression he was drawing on the board of his basement classroom and beckoning Julian into his office. “I set these aside for you,” he said, gesturing to a tower of books on the edge of his desk that collectively reached up to Julian’s forehead. “I’m sure you’ll find clarity as to your condition after a bit of research.”

“My condition?” Julian echoed, picking up the top book, which was entitled simply _The Orpheus Bard_.

“There is very little difference between bardship and illness,” Archman said. “Most who develop the magical abilities of a bard do so in place of some other neurological or psychiatric condition.” He looked distractedly up at Julian from his notes. “Or in your case, in addition to.”

Not for the first time, Julian figured he should have been insulted, but wasn’t. Something about Archman made it impossible to really consider anything a personal slight, since he seemed so incredibly uninterested in who Julian was as a person.

“Professor Thurston said something along those lines when I arrived here,” Julian said, and Archman nodded, apparently already done with the conversation while Julian turned to the books, trying to sort out how he’d get them all back into his dorm room.

“Er, Professor, could I possibly just—”

“Oh, one more thing,” Archman said, unfazed by Julian’s attempt to lift the small library that had been bestowed upon him. “I’m told my son is not cooperating with the rest of your ensemble.”

“Oh,” Julian said, one of the smaller books slipping out from the bottom of the pile. (Architecturally speaking, they had been stacked immensely poorly.) “Well—”

“Do be careful,” said Archman.

“Right, I’m just—”

“I know you and Calamity seem to have become friends of late,” Archman continued, “and I hoped you might encourage him to act in something of a more reasonable manner. He is given to bouts of illness himself,” he added, as Julian dropped another book. “But I’ve been assured this is unrelated to those episodes.”

“Episodes?” echoed Julian, hearing the doctor’s voice in his head: _What did you call them? The blurs, the episodes, like the stolen car?_

“Calamity has blackouts,” Archman supplied neutrally. “He’s had them since he was a small child. Moments of time he cannot account for,” he clarified, “preceded, most typically, by periods of vertigo or nausea. Occasionally headaches and the like.”

“That sounds—” Another book was lost to Julian’s lack of concentration. “Professor, that sounds incredibly dangerous—”

“Well, as I said, Calamity does not typically operate machinery,” Archman said. “He is well aware of his limits.”

Limits were certainly something Calamity Archman knew intimately, but more so as to where others could be pushed. “Did you know he broke his arm?” Julian asked, giving up on the books temporarily.

“Catastrophe did mention he’d suffered some kind of malady,” Archman said.

“And you don’t think that’s the result of a blackout?”

“Mr. Kinney, my son is entitled to his privacy,” said Archman, as Julian began to understand how Lam had been able to sneak Graves into his house for weeks at a time in their youth. “There are many ways for a person to be injured without it being the result of some sort of obscure bodily phenomena.”

“But I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember how he broke it,” Julian argued, thinking of both Lam’s ‘sure, that checks out’ reaction to the suggestion he might have fallen and his silence when the police officer told him the ‘other party’ wouldn’t be pressing charges. “Is he conscious during these blackouts? Does he _do_ things, or—?”

“Ah, Catastrophe, good,” Archman called, looking up as Cat appeared on the stairs. “It appears Mr. Kinney will need an extra set of hands, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, sure. Here are your transpositions, Daddy,” she said, handing him a folder.

“Excellent, thank you,” Archman replied, opening the folder at once and then falling into his chair, apparently dismissing them both with a single, inattentive motion.

“I’ll get these,” Cat said, bending to pick up the books Julian had dropped. “You got the rest?”

“Oh, you don’t have t-”

“No, no, just let me.” She smiled up at him, brightly. “Everything okay? You look a bit shaken.”

“I… nothing, never mind.” He smiled back, or tried to, and lifted the rest of the books from the desk, fumbling a little as they took the stairs and headed out of the chapel across the knoll.

“Do you often do extra work for your father?” he asked her.

“Whenever I can. He’s very particular,” she said.

That was unsurprising information, to say the least. “What about Lam?”

“What about Lam?”

“He doesn’t do things for your father?”

“Lam enjoys being untethered,” Cat said with a roll of her eyes, guiding him as they took the stairs. “By which I mean it might literally kill him to help someone else.”

“Is it true he gets blackouts?” Julian asked, and she cut her gaze sideways to his as they trudged up from the first floor.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Your father just told me.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a moment. “Well, you can’t tell anyone else, okay? Nobody knows about those.”

“Nobody?” That seemed unlikely. “Your father said it like it was nothing.”

She shrugged. “He thinks you and Lam are, I don’t know, close.” She gave him a thinner, slightly pained smile. “Which is not any sort of obligation, by the way. Lam’s a big boy, and anyway he doesn’t get them so often anymore.”

“How often?”

“I don’t know. A few times a year? Maybe less?”

“Does anything usually happen?”

“I… no, I don’t…” She hesitated. “I mean, no. I would say no, nothing.”

She was hiding something, definitely. As far as Julian could tell, there was only one reason to do that, and if Archman had told him because he thought Julian and Lam were close, then there was probably another person who had most likely heard or witnessed it before. 

One other person with very good reason to be angry. Perhaps even furious. One other person who had been so close to the Archmans there was no possible way he wouldn’t know.

 _Then my dad died_ , Graves had said, as if that and the story that had begun and ended with Lam were not so distantly connected.

_We both know this is your fault!_

“Wait.” Julian paused when they reached his floor, nudging Cat with his elbow to stop her from opening the door to his room. “Did he have an episode the day my sister died?” he asked in a low voice.

Later, he wouldn’t be sure whether Cat’s eyes had fully met his.

“No, of course not,” she assured him, gesturing him toward the door with another dazzling smile.

* * *

Lam made himself scarce again, or tried to. After he skipped his father’s first lecture that week, Julian decided the same thing would not happen again. He knew at least one of Lam’s escapist tendencies, and so barged into the little dive bar on Tuesday night, the day before they were supposed to have chosen the song they’d ultimately perform for the end of term ensemble judging. 

“Oh, it’s you,” said the waitress Julian had met the first time. “Want something to drink, or—?”

The wail of an amp caught Julian’s attention and he looked up to find Lam on stage, noodling with the guitar strings. The instrument itself was propped atop his cast, and Julian could not imagine how he was possibly managing to play it without extreme pain. Then he caught the signs of an unfocused look in Lam’s eyes and figured he’d sorted out part of the equation.

“Sorry, hang on,” Julian told the waitress, storming up to the stage and snatching the guitar from Lam’s hands.

“Grabby,” Lam commented blandly, swaying a little as Julian dropped down to crouch in front of him, snapping his fingers in Lam’s face.

“Lam, what are you on?”

“Go away, Mom.” Lam lurched out of Julian’s reach, then swam forward again, looking like he was struggling to hold up the weight of his own head. “What do you want?” he slurred with a suspicious glance.

“Come on. Let’s go.” Julian reached for him, grabbing him like a puppy by the scruff of his neck, but Lam swatted his hand away.

“What’s the big deal? I’m singing. Makes me better.”

“I don’t care what makes you feel better—”

“Not makes me _feel_ better, makes me _better_.” Lam looked drowsily up at him. “You have new books,” he said, an apparent observation, or possibly a question.

“Yeah? So?”

“Have you read them?”

“Have I read the two dozen academic texts your father gave me in the last forty-eight hours? No, Calamity, shockingly I have not—”

“I have to ask her something,” Lam said, sniffling a little before swiping his arm beneath his nose. “I have to know if it's really her. If she can hear me.”

“Who? What?”

“Saaaaaaaaaaaaam,” drawled Lam, giving Julian a look of impatience that only wound up magnifying his misery, if only because his eyelids were heavy and his attention drifted within seconds. “I have to ask her something,” he said again.

There was only one thing Lam could possibly need to hear. 

“You have to ask her if you killed her?” Julian guessed, surprised that he did not know what to feel upon saying it aloud. Angry? Afraid? He felt neither.

“Mm,” Lam said ambiguously, then scrambled upright, collapsing as he attempted to use his broken arm and then forcing himself away from Julian. “Come on, let’s do your sad song,” he said. “The horny one.”

Julian’s mind was firmly elsewhere, still contemplating how he could possibly stand in the same room with a person who needed to ask himself whether or not his hands had blood on them, but then Lam stumbled and nearly fell, barely catching himself on the mic stand.

“Is he okay?” asked the waitress, rushing over to the stage when it appeared Lam might tumble down the edge of it like a narrow-limbed desert weed. 

“Yeah, he’s…” Julian looked up to find the overhead spotlight focused on the curve of Lam’s shoulders, both of which were hunched over, his head hanging down. Sweat dripped from the saturated ends of his hair, his shirt worn translucent enough that Julian could see his ribs, the notches of his spine. 

He wondered for the first time what made Lam the sun and Cat the moon, and whether Lam saw the tattoo on his chest as setting or rising. He wondered how old they had been when they got them, how they’d grown apart from then, or whether they’d ever really been a single unit or felt they were. He wondered if Graves had betrayed Lam, or if Cat had, or if Sam had, or if maybe everyone did, Julian included. He wondered how it must feel to close his eyes each night and wonder what he was capable of. 

He wondered if he could forgive himself if he could know.

 _Tell him it’s not his fault_ , Sam whispered in Julian’s head, and before he could stop himself he was moving, taking the steps to reach Lam, catching his elbow and pulling him back. By the time he took the mic from Lam’s hand, a melody was already playing. Not Lam’s this time, but his.

It was gentle, almost delicate, like tiny, falling dewdrops of sound. This time, the guitar riff coming from nowhere was Julian’s, fed by something he couldn’t name. Memories? Dread? Pure, unfiltered angst? Lam was right that the song was sad and horny, wholly pathetic, but other words for that were lonely and pining. And those were precisely the things that Julian had always been.

“ _Coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing just fine, gotta gotta be down because I want it all_ ,” Julian sang to Lam, whose head lifted slightly, a slow half-smile crossing his face as he registered that Julian had done what he asked. “ _It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this? It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss—_ ”

In the time since Julian had kissed both Cat and Graves, the sensations had swum together, braiding into his memory, playing over and over again until they wrapped his thoughts like a noose. Maybe that was why he’d come here for Lam, desperate. Maybe now that Sam was gone, there was only one other person in the world who really understood what it meant to yearn.

“ _Now I’m falling asleep and she’s calling a cab while he’s having a smoke and she’s taking a drag. Now they’re going to bed and my stomach is sick, and it’s all in my head, but she’s touching his chest now, he takes off her dress now, let me go. And I just can’t look, it’s killing me and taking control—_ ”

“ _Jealousy, turning snakes into the sea_ ,” Julian sang as Lam came in with a harmony, his good hand clutching the base of Julian’s mic and splitting the distance between them. “ _Swimming through sick lullabies, choking on my alibis, but it’s just the price I pay, destiny is calling me—_ ”

“ _Open up my eager eyes_ ,” Julian sang to Lam, “ _cause I’m Mr. Brightside_.”

For once Lam’s eyes were steady, alert, the music settling in like a pulse, and Julian realized that he would forgive him. The melody was unremarkable—he hadn’t even bothered to write another verse—but the burst of Lam’s intangible energy driving the song was undeniable, like the answer to the question Julian's opening melody had asked.

“— _it started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this? It was only a kiss_ ,” Julian sang.

“ _It was only a kiss_ ,” Lam echoed, fingertips tightly wound below Julian’s like he was holding on for dear life, which maybe he was.

“ _Jealousy, turning snakes into the sea, swimming through sick lullabies, choking on my alibis, but it’s just the price I pay. Destiny is calling me, open up my eager eyes—_ ”

“ _Cause I’m Mr. Brightside_ ,” the crowd—crowd?—sang back. 

“ _I never_ ,” Julian sang, unsure how to finish the thought. “ _I never, I never, I never…_ ”

He didn’t know what he was saying, knowing only that there were no other words, but it didn’t seem to matter. Lam joined him, both of them belting within reasonable constraints until the song faded out the way it had started; sounding precisely like the meandering regrets of a drunk moron, which Julian unquestionably was.

It was only then that Julian realized he’d been so focused on Lam he hadn’t thought to look for Sam, who leaned in to say in his ear, “I told you it wasn’t his fault.”

His mind kept telling him that; that it wasn’t his fault, wasn’t Lam’s fault, kept saying that in Sam’s voice. Hearing voices, precisely the thing he wasn’t supposed to be doing. For the first time though, Julian thought to ask himself another question: whose fault _was_ it?

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Sam gasped ecstatically, her cheeks flushed with satisfaction just before she disappeared.

* * *

Julian imagined Lam might try to escape his promise to come to class if given the opportunity. He pictured himself dragging Lam out of bed by the ankle, or tracking him down after he’d disappeared altogether on a covered caravan. “You have to come,” Julian insisted the night before, herding Lam back to their room like a misbehaving goat.

“Yes, Jules, I hear you—”

“No, listen, I really need you t-”

“I _hear_ you, Julian, for fuck’s sake—”

“Please, Lam. It’s important.”

“I’m trying to sleep,” Lam growled irritably, placing the pillow on top of his head as Julian set an absurdly early alarm, just to make sure he woke up in time to force Lam to his feet if he had to.

When Julian woke, though—late, as his alarm had not gone off, surely the work of Calamity motherfucking Archman—he leapt to his feet, agitated and tripping over the shoes he’d set so carefully beside the bed in the interest of premeditated efficiency.

“Fuck,” Julian swore, stubbing his toe and looking up from Lam’s empty bed to find him waiting by the door, notebook in hand. 

“Jules,” Lam said blandly. “Class. We’re going to be late.”

Julian stared at him, unsure what to say beyond, “Really?”

“I can’t imagine why you’re under the impression I had other plans,” Lam snottily replied, pulling open the door as Julian fumbled around for a shirt. “Are you coming?” Lam called over his shoulder, leaving Julian to chase him to the top of the stairs. 

It was the first time he was going anywhere publicly with Lam during prime daylight hours, which seemed to strike several of their onlooking peers as notable despite the reality that they were simply two people coming from the same place who shared the same destination. A large number of eyes appeared to swivel in their direction, including Olympia’s. She seemed a bit jarred by the juxtaposition, a measure of concern spilling over her face that Lam either didn’t see or didn’t care to acknowledge.

“So. People really hate you,” Julian observed aloud.

“You’ll remember I’m a murder suspect,” Lam pointed out, blowing a kiss to a first year who shrank away in distress.

“Why, because you argued?”

“Yes.”

“So people think you argued and then you… dragged her to the lake and killed her?” Julian asked, not realizing how morbid that sounded until after he’d already gotten it out.

“I suppose,” Lam said, his face slightly green.

“What’s with the pregnancy thing?” Julian pressed, since Lam was clearly feeling generous. 

“What?”

“You said there was a rumor about Sam having a baby with—”

“Oh. Yeah, presumably that’s what we fought about.”

“But it wasn’t, right?” Julian insisted.

Lam looked at him slant-eyed. “You really don’t want to believe I did something to her, do you?” he asked, apparently amused. “How sweet of you.”

“I’m not stupid, Lam. I just don’t think that’s possibly what it was,” Julian retorted. “Unless you’d prefer I listened to rumors.”

Lam shrugged. “Fine. It’s not what we fought about,” he confirmed. 

“Was it even really a fight?”

“I…” Lam frowned, considering it for the first time. “At the time no, I wouldn’t have said so. But maybe in retrospect it was.”

“In retrospect to who?”

“Whom,” Lam said.

“What?”

“It’s ‘to whom,’ Jules. It’s the object of the verb.”

“Whomst cares,” muttered Julian, which made Lam’s smile flicker.

“I told you I was angry,” Lam said. 

“About Graves?”

Lam looked away. “Not really. I don’t know.”

“Lam, if you could just—”

“Hey,” said a surprised-sounding Cat, drawn into Julian’s other side like a magnetic force, her black boots slick from the dew in the grass. She was wearing tight black jeans with a black sweater that was neatly slashed beside the slats of her clavicle. Her perfume wafted towards Julian on a breeze, filling his nose with the relentless memory of her in his arms.

“Hi,” Julian managed.

“Catastrophe,” Lam offered formally from Julian’s other side.

“Calamity,” she replied, no less patrician. “I take it you’ve decided to show up today?”

“Can’t imagine how you and Nero will get anything done otherwise,” Lam replied.

“Oh _please_ ,” Cat scoffed, which Julian observed with relief was mostly sibling bickering, not actual aggression. “We already have a song.”

Lam’s hand shot out, reaching expectantly across Julian’s torso just as they paused before the chapel’s stairwell, which was too narrow to traverse three-wide. “Show me.”

“Fine.” Cat smacked her notebook into his hand as Lam took the lead down the stairs, Julian exchanging a glance with her in his wake.

“This is shit,” said Lam after no less than ten seconds, shoving Cat’s notebook hard into Julian’s gut. “I’m not performing this.”

“Excuse me? Julian and I wrote it,” Cat said, snatching it from Julian’s hand as vigorously as if he’d been the one to upset her, during which time Lam looked at Julian, arching a brow.

“He clearly knew I’d hate this,” Lam said to Cat, still eyeing Julian as he took a seat in Em’s usual chair. Em, who was entering the classroom behind them, rolled their eyes and shifted back a row, obviously not in the mood to bother. “Frankly, I’m surprised Nero agreed to it.”

“Agreed to what?” said Graves tightly, who emerged from Archman’s office clearly displeased to see Lam. He seemed to have no problem working with Cat and Julian as a threesome, which was a concept Julian belatedly processed and hastily dismissed from his thoughts.

“That song.” Lam gestured with the side of his head to the notebook in Cat’s hand. “It’s bad.”

“It’s written, which is already more than we can say for you,” Graves muttered, falling into the seat beside Julian. “Do you have anything better?”

“Jules does,” Lam said with a malevolent grin, and Julian paled.

“No, I don’t,” he said firmly, because there wasn’t a chance in hell that Cat and Graves were ever going to hear the song he’d written about them. He would happily leap into one of the gorges first.

“Don't be silly, Jules, of course you do—”

“We’re doing the song, Calamity,” Graves said.

“Oh, fuck off,” Lam said, thankfully losing interest in Julian. “Let’s take a vote, then.”

“You literally walked in outvoted,” Graves said. “Three to one. You lose.”

“Nope,” replied Lam.

“Lam, I’m going to kill you,” said Cat.

“Julian knows the song isn’t good enough,” Lam replied.

“Who says?” snapped Graves.

“Look at him, he hates it,” said Lam.

“He doesn’t hate it!” Cat said, exasperated.

“Ask him,” suggested Lam.

“Lam, would you just shut up?” retorted Graves.

“Uh,” Julian attempted, which was broadly ignored.

“Aren’t you allegedly _very good_ , Nero? Surely you can come up with a new song in a day,” said Lam.

“Mm yes hello it’ll be ensembles today,” announced Professor Archman, before disappearing back into his office.

“I don’t _need_ to come up with a new song,” Graves said tightly, “because Cat and Julian have already written one.”

“Very interesting that they chose to write a love song,” Lam commented to no one.

“Meaning?” demanded Cat.

“This really isn’t what I meant when I said you needed to be here today,” Julian said to Lam, who wasn’t listening, or at least wasn’t listening properly.

“You see? Julian specifically asked me to come,” Lam said, “which means he wants to perform a different song. A less shitty one,” he added gratuitously, which was partially true. Not that Julian disliked the song—that was just Lam being difficult, he suspected—but because it couldn’t possibly be… enough. Not that he knew how to explain that. 

“Julian wants you here because you’re part of the fucking ensemble,” Graves rumbled irritably, eyes cutting sideways to Julian as if this were his betrayal. “But if you’re not going to behave like a normal human being—”

“You really want Sam to hear you sing this song?” Lam posed to Graves. 

“What does that have to do with anything?” Graves snapped.

“She’ll laugh in your fucking face,” Lam said, and Graves’ expression tightened.

“You don’t get to say that, Lam—”

“Oh, I don’t? Really?”

“You weren’t the only one who knew her and you certainly don’t get to speak _for her_ —”

“Well _you_ certainly can’t,” Lam snapped, “and clearly someone has t-”

“Enough,” Julian said loudly, or perhaps shouted, it was unclear, although many people did turn to him, which meant it was certainly loud enough. Lam and Graves were now facing each other combatively, perhaps unaware that something rhythmic had been happening while they spoke. Rhythmic and almost robotic, like a train chugging along, escalating slowly.

“Look,” Julian said, “my sister is gone. And without her, _you’re_ supposed to be the three best bards in your year. Aren’t you?” he demanded, surprised to find how agitated he actually was, and even more infuriated to see how blankly they all looked back at him. “You’re all just runaways,” he reminded them, desperate to see some recognition on their faces. “Remember? _I knew it when I met you, I’m not gonna let you run away_?” he sang hoarsely, echoing their own words back to them in retaliation for some grievance to which he couldn’t put a name. “ _I knew it when I held you I wasn’t letting go_ —you fucking wrote that!”

They stared at him, at least sheepish enough not to interrupt or belittle him, while Julian continued to rant. “I don’t know why the fuck I was placed in this ensemble, but I sure as hell know why _you_ were all grouped together. Because you’re the ones who make magic.” He jabbed a finger at them. “It’s your responsibility to use whatever this is that you all have—that my sister had. You’re… Jesus,” Julian spat, suddenly unsure if he was making any sense, “don’t you get it? One of you is dead. One of you is fucking _dead_ , and you, the rest of you, as a species, you’re dying off. You’re a dying breed,” he sputtered helplessly, realizing he was thinking of Lam when he said it; of how perilously unwell he was, of how unbalanced Cat seemed to be, of how lost Graves looked when he wandered the edges of campus late at night, sleepless and haunted.

“The four of you were special, more special than any others of your kind, and now one of you is gone,” Julian accused them, choking at the last second on his anguish. He opened his mouth to make his point— _so get your shit together, assholes!_ —but couldn’t, suddenly unable to go on.

My sister is dead, Julian numbly thought again. One of you is already gone.

In the absence of anything more to put into words, Lam tapped his foot, adjusting in his seat. The rhythmic flow, the push and pull that he and Graves had started remained in the air, warping until suddenly Cat erupted to her brother “do it again,” and Julian looked up, frowning, as Lam resumed tapping his foot, and Graves unexpectedly shot up, pacing.

“ _There’s gonna be opposition_ ,” Graves sang-mumbled, “ _ain’t no way around it_.”

“ _But if you’re looking for strong and steady_ ,” Cat echoed, plucking up the melody Graves had set in motion, “ _well baby, you found it_.”

“ _We’ll weather the coldest night_ ,” Graves sang more firmly, nodding to Cat, who joined in with, “ _Baby we’re a dying breed_.”

Julian blinked with surprise, realizing the words, the inspiration, had somehow come from him. Cat and Graves glanced in unison at Lam, perfect mirror-images of each other, and Lam tilted his head in something of an okay sure, his head nodding along.

“ _When everyone’s compromising_ ,” Graves suggested, “ _I’ll be your diehard—_ ”

“ _I’ll be there when water’s rising_ ,” Lam replied lazily before Cat could open her mouth, “ _I’ll be your lifeguard_.”

Cat shot him a look, singing, “ _We’re cut from a stained glass mountain_ —”

“ _Baby we’re a dying breed_ ,” Graves joined in, harmonizing with her.

Julian couldn’t believe they were doing this so fast; he was hardly able to keep up when Lam suddenly joined Graves on his feet, humming a melody gently under his breath until Graves shook his head. “Na-nas,” Graves said.

“No,” said Lam firmly.

“ _Na na na na na_ ,” Graves sang to the melody Lam had hummed.

“I hate that,” gritted Lam.

“Too bad,” said Graves, adding in song, “ _When facing the wind got wicked, we rallied and raised up_.”

“ _So now if she comes back kicking_ ,” Cat sang, perching excitedly atop the desk while Lam hummed a harmony beneath the verse, “ _we’ll know what we’re made of_.”

“ _There’s gonna be opposition_ ,” Lam and Graves sang in unison, looking at each other with annoyance, “ _but we’ve got everything we need—_ ”

“ _Ooh, baby we’re a dying breed_ ,” finished Cat with a smile, marking a drum entrance they all felt like a pull to their chests.

“ _From the coveted touch of a girl in love_ ,” Lam sang, “ _I was lifted by the sound of a spirit in need_ —”

“ _Baby we’re a dying breed_ ,” Graves added, the song leading into a bridge as they all turned expectantly to Julian, who gaped at them.

“ _I don’t know what you want from me_ ,” he said helplessly, not even realizing he was singing it until he’d already opened his mouth. “ _Sometimes I don’t know what to do. It’s like I’m screaming in a dream—it’s like I can’t get through. What if we’re not prepared for this_?” he sang to Lam, whose mouth was twisted in something half-manic, something like approval. “ _What if we just can’t find the trail_?”

“ _Then I remember the promise I made_ ,” Lam answered him, “ _and the way that I fell for the coveted touch of a girl in love_ —”

“ _I was taken by the sound of a spirit in need_ ,” Cat and Graves joined in. “ _Oh baby we’re a dying breed_ —”

“ _We’ve got everything we need_ ,” Graves sang, “ _baby we’re a dying breed_ —”

“ _Na na na na na_ ,” sang Cat, grabbing the composer keyboard in the corner and playing a series of chords, a long outro, then a delicate fade out as Lam made a face.

“Do we have to with the na-nas?”

“Come on,” Graves sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s a good melody, Lam—”

“I _know_ that, I came up with it—”

“Guys,” Julian said.

“I would hardly say you _came up_ with it—”

“Guys,” Julian repeated, louder.

“Lam, if you’re just trying to pick another goddamn fight—”

“GUYS,” Julian shouted, shoving both Lam and Graves and pointing.

Sam was sitting on the desk beside Cat with her blue dress spread out like a fan, a smile on her face while she looked at them. She was clapping, a little ironically, like she found the whole thing funny but kind of weirdly sweet. She tilted her head like _Jesus, finally_ , and Julian watched Graves’ entire body cave in on itself, his chest sagging with a mix of pain and… 

Hope, it seemed. The look of a man who thought he’d never catch a glimpse of his own heart again.

Orpheus, thought Julian with sudden, impenetrable clarity.

“Sam,” Graves croaked to her. Beside Sam, Cat was staring down at something, transfixed. Sam’s hands, it seemed, or possibly her lap, but if Cat was seeing the look on Graves’ face, it didn’t seem to faze her. It was clearly nothing she’d never seen before.

 _Hi_ , Sam mouthed sadly to Graves, shrugging in greeting to Lam, and then she looked over at Julian and was gone.

* * *

“This one’s been stuck in my head,” Julian told Lam on Friday night. They’d been scheduled another night at the dive bar, though they’d been told they’d have to sing the “eager eyes” song, which Julian figured they would shorthand as _Mr. Brightside_. “Do you know this one?” he asked, handing Lam the _For Julian_ book of Sam’s songs.

“I’ve never seen any of these,” Lam admitted, setting the book on his lap and flipping one-handed through the pages before returning to the song Julian had handed him. “I was wondering what had been done with all her stuff.” He was clutching the notebook protectively, looking sad to let it go before grudgingly handing it back to Julian. “But I can pick it up if you start it.”

“Okay, thanks.” It was _When You Were Young_ , the song that Julian couldn’t stop fixating on whenever his mind happened to wander. Which had been happening a lot these days, probably since Iver had begun picking on him again. Evidently Cat’s warning had not lasted particularly long, or maybe something new had happened in Iver’s rich fantasy life where Julian had shamelessly wronged him. After their ensemble meeting, he had specifically told Julian not to expect to receive more than a fraction of the points the Archmans and Graves would get for their song, since it was “clear” that Julian’s contributions were minimal. 

But for whatever reason, Sam’s song was like a thorn in Julian’s head, omnipresent. _We’re burning down the highway skyline on the back of a hurricane that started turning when you were young_. It had to mean something, maybe because he had actually known Sam when she was young, or maybe the opposite—it was the fact that she had written it in the second person. When _you_ were young. Not Sam herself.

The song was for Julian, but it also clearly wasn’t. He thought that maybe performing it with Lam—and specifically whatever odd thing Lam brought to everything he sang—might provide some obscure form of clarity. Julian was still thinking about the song when he heard his name from someone in the bar, snapping him out of his distraction.

“Julian Kinney,” said Renata Stirling, her blonde hair in one of those half-top knots, the rest of her all dolled up in a bra top and waist-cinching jeans. “I’m surprised you didn’t come looking for me.”

Julian looked away from where he was adjusting the height of the mic stand, glancing down at her. “What do you want?” he asked, looking around for Lam, but he was somewhere else fiddling with something, maybe getting a drink.

“I won’t hurt you, baby boy. I just want to chat,” Renata purred.

“About what?” The lights overhead were hot and bright, sufficiently blinding so that Julian couldn’t quite make out the expression on her face.

“About who killed Sam Kinney,” she murmured, stroking his cheek with one finger before strutting away to take a seat, one long leg folding patiently over the other at a table in the back of the crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I appear to be writing into a particularly apathetic void, I do always finish what I start, so here we are. This week's songs are "Mr. Brightside" and "Dying Breed."


	8. This is Not a Shakedown

Priscilla Ransom, called Skit as she so often was and stage-named purely because she’d liked the way it sounded, was either very magical or not remotely magical at all, depending on who you asked about it. At the time she’d been recruited for bardship at Dives, she’d ironically been focused on her audition for Bard, where it was her intention to study and eventually become a composer. Specifically, she wanted to compose the soundtracks for epic, fantastical video games, for which she and her sister Deidre, who was in a computer science program, shared an interest. Their plan was, and continued to be, to form a small gaming company together—Ransom Games, for which Skit did not necessarily need any sort of formal musical education, and certainly not to the extent that she would eventually pursue. But then she'd heard what Dives actually was, and it became something of… an obsession, let’s say.

Skit’s parents were both clinical neurologists, avid researchers whose books on brain functions filled shelves upon shelves of the family library. (For most of their lives, Skit and Deidre had shared a room because the books required quarters of their own.) It was for this reason, perhaps, that Skit was more interested than her peers seemed to be in the particular functions of bards. From what she’d gathered—mostly from independent reading, which had been encouraged at home; most of their meals had been taken with every family member spooning something one-handed into their mouths while the other hand served as the convenient trident for some paperback spine or another—the “magic” produced while performing came from a rare, probably genetic malfunction stemming from overdevelopment and subsequent overuse of the right brain, from which originated creativity and inspiration. Stimulation of this one area could, in some cases, produce an otherwise unusable wavelength akin to what most human ears registered as sound, hence the connection. The focus on music in bards was largely the result of trial and error, and in particular the observation that some people had to be actively performing in order to access that distinct neurology of magic. 

Some people, on the other hand, were actively performing all the time. Or at least it seemed that way in Skit’s experience.

Because most bards did not tap into their ability to overstimulate their right brains until they had neared physical maturity—at which point chemical malfunctions were either mood disorders or magical talent—there was a decent mix between students like Skit, who harbored preliminary interest in music and pursued it prior to attending Dives, and students like Sam Kinney, for whom their abilities came so naturally it did not seem to cleave so neatly between “normal” behavior and bard-specific activities, and therefore they had no formal training in any of the arts. Hard now to imagine that Sam Kinney had ever come to this campus underprepared; never once had she ever looked it. But Skit had a way of seeing people the way they were rather than the way they chose to present themselves, and to her, Sam was a fish out of water, heedlessly determined (nevertheless!) to swim. Perhaps it was why she was so secretive, sometimes not accounted for, other times reclusive. She was an extrovert who was also, at times, anti-social—a person could be invited into Sam Kinney’s circle, but it was unlikely they’d get much beyond the front door.

But back to the subject of Skit, who was known in her circles for her inattention, which was in fact not inattention but rather a mix of hyper-focus and desperation. In the parallel universe in which she’d chosen to go to Bard instead of coming to Dives to _be_ a bard, she was likely an excellent student; diligent, proficient, although less flatteringly, perhaps also narcissistic and egotistical. After all, Skit had always known she was an exceptional vocalist, even if it was not her plan in life, and at a normal conservatory, she might have been permitted to excel without the caveat of insufficiency. 

On a semi-related note, Skit didn’t have the persona of a performing artist (and don’t try to reassure her because she already knows what’s what). She knew perfectly well what people expected from Asian women in order for them to achieve even close to what a white girl in their place might accomplish, and talent aside, Skit had none of it. What Skit had was stocky legs, a moderately pudgy middle, and a corresponding taste for her grandmother’s mandu, meaning she was very precisely the sort of thing that would never be cast to fill center stage. The rise of Korean girl groups in pop culture had done little but remind Skit that she was somehow both too small and too big, and certainly too clumsy. Too ineffective a dancer. There was not much to fantasize about when it came to her aesthetic, which made her useless as far as society seemed to be concerned. 

Not that she minded. Skit had no interest in being desirable, which seemed a chore. The idea of desire itself was very foreign, largely incomprehensible. Also a bit burdensome, if she was being honest. If chemistry was notoriously fleeting anyway—with love eventually giving way, as her parents’ marriage had, to a sort of affable neutrality—then what was the point? She waited to feel excited by the prospect of someone’s company, or at least by the idea of being swept off her feet, but gradually the sense of impending possibility was replaced by a sort of tacit repulsion. For heaven’s sake, look what had happened to Sam! Would Skit have wanted that, people falling over themselves for her to the point where it hardly even mattered who she was, what she thought, what she wanted? No, and it wasn’t delusion or envy to say so, nor was it a lie. Skit wanted one thing: to finish at Dives and rejoin her sister back in the world to continue their dream. What had Sam wanted? In Skit’s opinion, she had been so busy juggling the needs of others she’d never had the opportunity to decide. Which meant, quite firmly, that sex (and certainly lust) was a goddamn waste of time.

Anyway, Skit’s magic. It didn’t exist according to Professor Archman, who’d gone to war with Professor Thurston over the suggestion that a girl with ample talent in composition be permitted to attend a school for musical prodigies. Thurston shouted back something about Skit’s talents being far more useful than Archman’s considering Stella (whoever that was) and for that matter Catastrophe (a person, Skit would later find out) and then both of them continued on in hushed but heated tones until things abruptly went silent. Eventually Archman stormed out, and then Thurston reappeared, red-faced, to call Skit back into her office.

“I will admit,” Thurston said tightly, “that if you do choose to attend this school, there will be those who feel you have no place here.”

Skit was familiar with that sense, having been alive and female and not particularly thrilling to look at for quite a while by then. “Okay. But you disagree with those people?”

“Yes, I strongly disagree,” Thurston said, and though Skit suspected Thurston was now so locked into her position she would refuse to be persuaded otherwise even if it were, in fact, the better answer, Skit could not resist her sudden sense that Thurston ought to be proven right.

“If I have no magic, how will I compete?” Skit asked.

“This is primarily a school for _music_ ,” Thurston said—a bit grumpily, probably because she’d been called upon to make the same argument minutes prior with the other professor. “Our students do have magical proclivities, but we teach musical performance, theory, and composition, just like any other conservatory in this country.”

“But if I’m not magic—”

“I distinctly did not say that,” Thurston snapped, and then softened. “You’ll have to understand,” she said in a more measured tone, “that there has always been some debate about where a bard’s magic actually comes from. In Professor Archman’s view, if we were to run a CT of a typical bard’s brain while they were performing, it would— _should_ ,” she corrected herself grimly, “light up like a Christmas tree. Whereas in your case I suspect it’s much more… constant. Less controlled, but no less present.”

“Is there a way to prove it?” Skit asked, to which Thurston seemed to become invigorated.

“If you’re willing to sit through an examination, then yes,” she said.

In Skit’s opinion things were going quite far, especially since this had been merely a passing fascination at first. Increasingly, though, she felt the need to prove something about her value. Largely that a man could not simply shout that it did not exist and therefore render it nonexistent. 

“Alright,” she agreed.

In the end, the “examination” consisted of a room full of professors that Skit would later learn were Errata and Welch (the composition professor and Skit’s future advisor) in addition to Thurston and Archman. She was asked to stand in the center of the room and wait for something, although she did not know what. 

After five or so minutes, a coltishly thin blonde girl waltzed in late, sunglasses on.

“You’re late,” Thurston and Archman said in unison.

“And yet worth waiting for,” the girl replied, glancing at Skit. “So this is the prospective, then?”

“Yes, this is Priscilla,” Thurston supplied, cutting Archman off with a glare before he could speak. “We’d just like you to sing with her for a few minutes. You don’t mind, do you?” Thurston asked Skit, who shook her head. “We’ll be judging certain aspects of the performance, but it’s nothing you’ll need to have prepared for. Just perform exactly as you normally would.”

“Fine.” The blonde took a few long strides to reach Skit, peering at her. “I’m Renata.”

“Priscilla.”

“Doesn’t fit,” said the blonde, and then pulled a notebook out of her bag, handing it to Skit. “Are you comfortable with sightseeing?”

“Yes.” Even if she hadn’t been, she’d have lied.

“Alright. You take the melody and I’ll sing the harmony. Nervous?” Renata asked suspiciously.

“Should I be?” asked Skit.

“Depends who you ask,” said Renata with half a laugh, pulling a pitch pipe from her pocket and offering Skit the starting note.

The song itself Skit still remembered for the surprising amount of biblical imagery; the constant hint at sin and judgment, which she had not expected from someone who looked intensely unconcerned with either.

 _The streets of persuasion_ _  
__Are plated with gold_ _  
__Your heart’s in the right place_ _  
__But you travel down the wrong road_ _  
__Like so many before you_ _  
__The gates open wide_ _  
__Here come the rising tide_

 _Let’s go out tonight_ _  
__There’s a mystery underneath the neon light_ _  
__Before life and dreams collide_  
 _‘Cause the truth’s gonna come and cut me open wide_ _  
And you can’t escape the rising of the tide_

There was one verse in particular—two lines that stuck with Skit: “ _and the company you keep / Well, they plan your crucifixion as we speak… if you can’t decipher just who’s on your side / you will not escape the rising of the tide._ ”

“Stop,” Thurston called, and Renata and Skit both obliged. “Priscilla, if you could please list ten things about yourself.”

“I… now?” Skit asked, bewildered.

“Yes, now,” Thurston said.

“Er, I, um. My name is Priscilla Kang, I’m eighteen, my sister is Deidre, I’m allergic to pineapple, I’m from Dallas, I don’t understand the stakes of most professional sports, my sister is my best friend, my parents are neurologists, I’d like to go to school here because I think it’s much more interesting than a normal conservatory and I don’t want to have to bother with general education credits when I could just be writing music, I know I shouldn’t drink coffee but I like it and honestly my height was probably never going to exceed 5’2 anyway. Is that ten? My favorite book is _Emily of New Moon_ by Lucy Maud Montgomery—”

“There. You see?” Thurston said triumphantly to Archman, who blinked, and then removed a set of what appeared to be earplugs. 

“What?” said Archman.

“Don’t tell me you weren’t listening, Edward. Renata’s not even singing anymore—”

“What?”

“Edward, for god’s sake—”

“May I go?” asked Renata with a long-suffering sigh.

“Yes, you’re dismissed,” said Thurston impatiently, as Renata turned surreptitiously to Skit.

“You know this means I’ll have no use for you,” she said in a quiet voice, albeit one that was neither kind nor cruel. “But you’ll most likely get in now, if that’s what you want. Archman will be first in line to make sure of it.”

“Why?” Skit asked in an undertone. 

“Because the only thing he loves more than someone who can do everything he can do is someone who can do something he can’t,” Renata replied matter-of-factly, almost smugly, before sauntering out the door the way she’d come.

Later, Skit would learn that much of being in the classroom with a group of magical prodigies would feel exactly like that “examination” had: bewilderingly normal, and more bewildering for being normal when other people clearly expected her to feel otherwise. She was a bard with no musical talent who struck others as absentminded because she was deliberately hiding the fact that she did not see the things they did. Sometimes for the worse, because when she opened her mouth, no symphony came out, no heavenly chords, no driving sense of control, no waves of sound mastered by the inexplicable neurology of magic. Sometimes, though, it was plainly for the better. 

In Skit’s unmagical and therefore logical mind, the metric for comparison between her peers was extremely straightforward. Who had a voice? Who could compose? Essentially these were yes or no questions, with any embellishments or magical fripperies easily dismissed. It was for this reason, perhaps, that Skit considered Cat Archman to be extraordinarily underwhelming. She found it particularly bemusing that everyone could not see how hard Cat Archman worked—that the eccentricities other people considered contribution to her genius were in fact distractions, in Skit’s mind, from the fact that Cat could not write a song unless she suffered for it. She was, in a sense, a tortured artist, in that she had to torture herself to produce any art. 

Similarly: Graves Nero and Lam Archman. There was no question Lam was better, and also no question in Skit’s mind that Graves knew that and resented it, and would likely spend the entirety of his career looking over his shoulder for Lam, expecting him to linger just behind. Even if Lam did nothing but flip burgers for the rest of his life and never sang another note, Graves would only use that to contribute to his mythos: that he was the heroic one who’d made it when the true talent, the one who cared so little for his abilities in a way that clearly drove Graves insane, was the one who was better all along.

It did not help, probably, that Skit did not believe Graves capable of genuine feeling, only an idyllic, lusting want. His love for Sam, for example. Real? She doubted it. What was visible in her mind was the fact that Sam was everything Graves could never be; what Cat could never be. Sam was a natural, her talent undeniable, which was why Sam couldn’t be bothered to give two fucks about it. Sam, who didn’t know what it was to not be exceptional, struggled with mundane problems. This boy or that boy? God, Skit thought even now, what a waste.

“I actually have no idea what will happen to you,” Sam had told Skit once, smiling foggily at her. “So you may be the only person in the entire world I can like without an agenda.”

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to me,” Skit informed her. “I’m going to leave here with high marks and excellent recommendations and then I’m going to go back home and make video games with my sister.”

“That excites you?” Sam asked wistfully. “Like, that’s enough?”

“What more is there?” Skit asked, and Sam gave her a sort of middling half-smile.

“I don’t know, honestly,” she said. “So maybe you’re right.”

That conversation had stuck with Skit like Renata’s song; the idea that Sam Kinney, who apparently also saw things other people didn’t but in a different way, had such a warped view of the world. Again, Skit understood the loneliness of this, because she, too, never felt she was seeing the things other people saw; the obsessions with love and romance that she felt no particular calling towards. For Sam, though, it was something else, something more insidious about what people “really” were, and this was how Skit felt she knew exactly what it was that had driven Sam to the lake that day. 

Skit had lent her very discerning eye (the one other people thought was always distracted, which was, in reality, simply always at work) to the facts of Sam’s case. Witnesses had heard Lam Archman fighting with Sam, accusing her of something, maybe infidelity, though that must have followed later, when another witness claimed to have seen Sam at the women’s clinic in one of the nearby towns. It was such a simple equation, after all, oh a woman cheats on her boyfriend and winds up knocked up, of course that’s the whole of it, pens down case closed. But they had not seen what Skit had seen between Graves and Sam; the way it was Graves who’d flexed over the ownership of her, not Lam. Lam Archman did not own Sam Kinney or even try to, but Graves, who already had so much—Cat and the esteem of their professors and his preternatural talent for stardom—was the type of man who always wanted more. Whatever had brought Sam to the lake that day, it wasn’t Lam, and Skit was sure of it. Even a person with Sam’s secrecy (much less her secrets) could not disguise the obvious. Whatever had put Sam in that water must have come down to Graves.

Besides, the clinic thing turned out to be false, anyway. A ruse, people said, though Sam wasn’t so bored (or boring) that she had to run around looking for ways to amuse herself; unlike Renata, who Skit was willing to bet was the “witness” in question. Despite the lyrics Skit had sung with her, which hinted at something below the surface, Renata’s Dives persona had always truck Skit as parasitic, somehow. The personality of a woman who could not sit with her own company for long without turning away from either boredom or disgust. 

In Sam’s absence, Skit felt an element was perpetually missing, the composition of their friend group now forever incomplete. Olympia was falling apart, that was obvious. Lam was destroying himself, probably. Em was more sullen, angrier with the world and trying even more obnoxiously to hide it, and Reid, oh, Reid. He just wanted everyone to get along.

Part of Skit did want Graves to go down for something. To _lose_ something. Why was it that he got to continue living precisely as he had when all evidence pointed to him being the thing that had thrown Sam off course? Which was possibly assuming she was ever _on_ course, but Skit wanted to think so. She wanted to believe it. People like Sam were not put on this earth simply to be lost, to die young and tragically. Though it was worth noting how much she’d shaken all of them up irreversibly in such a short amount of time, and would they still have been grateful for that? In five years, in ten or twenty, would they have thanked her for being their living mirror, or would they have turned away so as not to see? Sometimes Skit wondered if it was best that Sam would never live to find out.

As for Julian. The corresponding puzzle piece to Sam, shaped by all her edges. He was peaceable where Sam was not, uncertain where she was not, fascinated by them where Sam had already known everything she felt she needed to about them. She had been, in a way, idly condescending, always knowing what was best for them, what they really were, who they needed to become. In a more just world, maybe they’d have simply drifted apart when Sam finally said the hard thing to the person who couldn’t stand to hear it, of which there were many possibilities. That disarming bluntness they all admired might have one day become crass, tiresome, unwelcome. Maybe one day Sam would have told Graves that success would never make him; that like a hole that only got deeper and deeper, he would always long for something he’d never get. Maybe she’d tell Olympia that illness was illness, the world was unfair, and none of it could be smiled or daydreamed away. Maybe she’d tell Reid his dreams were too small or tell Em their anger was too selfish or tell Skit… whatever she would have told Skit. That there wasn’t more to life, not really. That life itself was only about giving and sharing something that Skit would never learn to feel, and therefore Skit’s life in particular was useless.

Or, Skit thought, watching Cat and Julian gaze at each other from where they sat on opposite sides of the dining hall table, maybe Sam would have told Cat one day that yes, someday someone would actually see her. But neither they nor Cat would like what they saw. 

“You seem contemplative,” Reid commented, and Skit looked sideways at him, noting from her periphery the little tremor in Olympia’s hands. That had been increasing lately, not that Skit knew what to do about it. Neurologically it could be anything from sleeplessness to drugs, and either way, what could they possibly say? It had been Sam who’d introduced her to Renata. For that alone, Olympia would surely feel compelled to keep the connection alive.

“Mm, not really. Where’s Em?”

Reid gave her a look, to which Skit replied with a grimace.

“We have to intervene, right? Like, we _have_ to. This is absurd,” Skit said, dropping her voice, “and O’s only getting worse.”

Reid glanced at Olympia, then back at Skit. “We could try to get Graves to talk to her?”

Great. Just what they needed. “Maybe something more sustainable than that,” Skit muttered.

“Well, look, if you got terrorized by your own head every night, what would you possibly value more than the thing that actually made you better?” Reid prompted.

An excellent point by Reid, who could spin anything—opioid (or worse) addiction included—into a positive thing. “There’s really nothing else? No other ideas?”

“Aside from Em’s strategy of peering coldly at her from afar, you mean?” Reid joked.

“You have to convince Em to stop doing that. It’s creepy.”

“Yes, because Em famously listens to me.”

“And you think I could do it any better?” Skit scoffed. “Em only listened to—”

“Sam,” Reid finished for her. “Just like O.”

The two of them sighed, a mutual resignation, and Reid returned his attention to his lunch while Skit looked up at Julian, who was chuckling at something Cat said. 

She wondered if she should warn him. Or if that would even help. In Skit’s experience, people did not like to be told things. Besides, what could happen? Everything caught in Cat’s web seemed perfectly happy to be there, as far as Skit could tell. Sam included.

“She’s really not what she seems,” Sam had always said about Cat, almost defensively. She and Cat were inseparable, each other’s other halves, so maybe that was part of it; that something off about Cat meant something off about Sam. “She’s just lonely, you know? Her dad’s so cold to her, he barely ever looks at her, and Lam’s… I don’t know—”

“Hey, it’s not that I don’t like Cat,” Skit said, because she did, of course. What wasn’t to like? Cat was perfectly fine as a person. Did that mean Skit would choose to tell Cat her secrets? Absolutely not, if she had any. But she didn’t, so it was a moot point. (Plus she’d always take Cat’s side over Graves, who was basically just helpless to his bottomless pit of wants.) “I just think you’re sometimes overcompensating for her, you know? Making her out to be something she isn’t.”

“I see what people really are, Skattle,” Sam sighed theatrically. “It’s my curse.”

“Sure, but maybe certain objects in the mirror are closer than they appear,” Skit said jokingly, though she could tell that Sam hadn’t been listening to her, not really. Sam was like that occasionally, in another place. Towards the end it was more frequent, and actually, since it was during the summer—because they were sporadically attending guest lectures or coming and going as part of their individual, non-Dives lives—there was at least a brief period during which every member of their friend group blamed themselves for not having better answers. 

While most of that particular day was well documented, memorable in retrospect for what they’d lost, the week and perhaps even the month prior were filled with vacancies. Had they not paid enough attention? She’d been gone for long stretches in Skit’s memory. Elsewhere, but presumed safe because how could she not be, when she was Sam Kinney and she was invincible, and adored? 

Alone in their little bubble further down the table, Cat was laughing at something Julian said, her hand outstretched to brush her fingers along the interior of his wrist. He was smiling at her, pleased, and either it was wonderful that two grieving people had found relief in each other despite their losses, or it was bullshit.

And Skit Ransom, who had never been able to tell the difference, was beginning to wonder if maybe that was all anything was after all.

* * *

“So,” Julian asked Cat, “what’s the deal with Renata?”

“I told you,” Cat replied neutrally, “she’s a friend,” though that was a fairly underwhelming sentiment considering he was hoping for something a bit… more. More informative, at least.

“Do you think there’s any reason she’d want to talk to me?”

“Other than curiosity? Not really,” Cat said unapologetically, as was her way. “Though I suppose she was a little obsessed with Sam.”

 _Obsessed with_ did not seem like the direction Julian hoped to go in terms of getting questions answered. Not that he knew what he wanted from Renata, really, nor could he judge her for it even if she were. He supposed he, too, was fairly obsessed with Sam, which as far as wording went was as accurate as it was unflattering. 

Renata hadn’t stuck around for very long after crashing Julian and Lam’s performance, instead leaving her phone number with the waitress alongside a time and date, presumably taking it upon herself to schedule an opportunity to meet. Julian had asked Lam what he thought, but Lam, categorically himself, was predictably unhelpful. “You realize that while there’s a mere 50% chance that Renata will tell you something useful, there’s a 100% chance she’s manipulating you in order to fulfill some sort of devious plan? She is literally a _siren_ ,” Lam said in the special tone of voice he used to correct Julian’s grammar. “And you, for the record, are much, much hornier than Odysseus. Or his crew, for that matter.”

“Why are you asking about Renata?” Cat said, pushing her salad around on her plate. “I thought you’d had some sort of argument at her party.”

“Did Graves say that?”

She gave him a sly, loaded glance. “He mentioned some things about running into you that night, yes.”

Julian’s cheeks flushed. “Well, I just… she said she knew Sam, so—”

“Not any better than I knew her,” Cat said, “or any of the rest of us, for that matter. I think Sam just felt sorry for Renata.”

Typically Sam did not feel sorry for people. She felt more of a righteous anger, active defensiveness, or extreme indifference. But then again, wasn’t every day at Dives further proof that Julian had not really known the person Sam had become? 

“About the siren thing,” Julian said, clearing his throat as Cat paused to look up. “Is there some way around that?”

“Ear plugs.” Cat smiled. “But eventually people do become resistant to it. It’s sort of like being exposed to a virus. You get antibodies over time.”

“Is it true about Renata and Iver?” Julian asked, and Cat set her fork down, contemplating the rest of her plate before pushing it away.

“Look,” she said eventually, “there are two sides to every story. Nobody ever gets to know the intricacies of what goes wrong between two people, you know?”

“I know,” Julian said, with the uncomfortable feeling that Cat disapproved of his asking. “I just meant—”

“If Renata had wanted to do something with herself, she would have,” Cat said definitively. “It’s not like he ruined her life. And seeing as Iver eventually disentangled himself from her, clearly that was always possible too, so she didn’t ruin him, either. Whatever went wrong between them isn’t really anyone’s business,” she said sharply.

Whoa, thought Julian. 

“Sorry,” he said, longing for five minutes ago when he hadn’t stupidly brought up Renata Stirling and Cat was toying playfully with the bone of his wrist, pretending to read his palm. “I didn’t mean to stir up bad blood or anything.”

“Oh, it’s nothing to me,” Cat said with a shrug. “My father isn’t the one who hired Iver, Thurston is. It just puts me in an awkward position whenever it comes up.”

“Because you’re friends with Renata?” Julian asked.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, of course,” Cat said absently. Then, after a moment, “Are you actually going to go see her?”

“I don’t know.” Yes. “Maybe.” Definitely. His better judgment had made no appearances in several years and at this point, Julian had stopped bothering to leave the light on. “I mean, even if all I get out of it is one stupid Sam anecdote, it might be better than nothing,” he said, hoping that was a sufficient defense.

“Understandable.” Cat softened, giving him a sympathetic look. “It seems so sad that any of us should have more of her than you did.”

And yet, thought Julian wistfully. 

“It’s fine.”

“No it isn’t.” She looked at him for a long time, then reached out to brush her thumb over his knuckles, tentatively. “If you’re sad,” she said quietly, and looked up at him through her lashes, sweetly and in a way that made him want to hunt for her dinner, or build bear traps or whatever it is he was supposed to do in a primitive caretaking way. 

“No, not sad. Just…” Incomplete, only that had to have sounded worse. “Wondering,” he managed. “That’s all.”

“Well, if you need anything. Someone to come with you. Emotional support. A ride.” She shrugged in offering, giving him an ironic sort of smile. 

“Thanks, Cat,” Julian said, meaning it. Briefly, he wondered if maybe she was offering him something more, something potentially lovely and tempting. But before he could slow his idiotic pulse, she was giving his hand a squeeze, releasing him.

“Graves and I both care about you,” she said, and Julian thought oh yes, Graves, the man who loves my sister, who belongs to you, who comes around to poison my thoughts and remind me I’m sick as if I don’t already know it each time I look you in the eye. _That_ Graves.

“Thanks,” said Julian again, faintly.

* * *

“Can I borrow your dad’s car?” Julian asked Lam, who was shirtless with two open books resting across his chest. A third was held open with his good hand while the broken one lay uselessly across his stomach. 

As far as Julian could tell, Lam had not attended his classes for the week save for their ensemble periods, for which Lam seemed to be reserving his energy to take on every plausible fight with Graves. Over harmonies, over wording, over whether Graves should be able to have a drink of water without Lam smacking the bottle out of his hand. All equally suspect, in Lam’s opinion.

As for Julian, the week had been freshly miserable. On the one hand he’d finally gotten what he wanted—the ensemble to work together as a group—but on the other, their ensemble was meeting more regularly with Iver, who was either actively grouchier or simply had more time on his hands with which to streamline his hatred of Julian. Julian was grateful, at least, that this was a conservatory and not a high school, and as such Iver had no control over whether he went to detention or flunked out. In his first year theory course, the exams were straightforward enough that Iver could shade off a point or two but nothing worse. As an ensemble advisor, he could subject Julian to beratement however he saw fit, but progressing at the end of term would be up to a panel of judges. That they both knew it seemed to only make things worse; Iver’s “complex,” as Em called it, meant that his resentment of Julian, who wasn’t entirely a failure despite Iver’s best efforts to convince him he was, had begun a steady climb.

Also, the weather had taken a sharp turn from relieving autumn chill to winter-adjacent bluster, which Cat assured him would only get worse. “You’re not really built for winter, are you?” she asked with amusement as Julian yanked the zipper on his hoodie all the way up to his throat. “Hope you’ve got a good coat.”

No, he didn’t. What he had was a hoodie and a problem for Future Julian to solve, not that it was relevant at the time.

“So you’re meeting up with Renata, then?” Lam asked, struggling to turn the page one-handed. Julian reached out with a sigh, lifting the book from Lam’s fingers and smoothing the page down, replacing it in his hand. 

“Yes. I know you think it’s stupid, but—”

“Jules, you do things I think are stupid every day. Why stop now?” Lam said, struggling to sit upright. One of the books slid from his chest to his abdomen before launching itself to the floor. “Damn,” said Lam, “lost my place.”

“So? The car?” Julian asked, picking up the book. He replaced it on the pile beside Lam’s pillow, which was essentially the height of a nightstand at this point. 

“Yes, alright, one second.” Lam looked around for his shirt, sweeping it up from the floor with his left hand and tossing it in the general direction of his head. It landed awkwardly and he gave it a tug, struggling to fit one arm through what was clearly the neckhole until Julian got up again with a growl.

“Stop. You’re a menace.” He twisted the shirt around, fitting Lam’s head through and then carefully easing his right hand into it, then his left. “Better?” he asked when Lam had secured the hem around his hips.

Lam looked up, dark eyes finding Julian’s.

“Get the keys from Proust,” he said, and plucked Julian’s wallet from beside his bed as Julian rolled his eyes, reaching below the dresser for the book where Lam kept all his “valuables,” so to speak. 

Lam was half a stride ahead of him out the door when Julian caught up, smacking his good shoulder. “Hey. My wallet, please?”

“I’ll give it to you in the car.”

“Why?”

“I need the walk.”

“Lam,” Julian sighed, “one of these days you’ve got to learn there’s no need to take me hostage each time you want to get some exercise.”

“Who’s a hostage? You’ve got the keys,” Lam said. 

They stepped onto the grassy knoll, soaked as it was in the day’s downpour, and Julian looked sorrowfully down at his feet. “I hate this,” he said morosely to nothing.

“What, water?”

“Yes, I hate water. No, I mean… wet feet. Cold.” He shivered, less for emphasis than purely out of general revulsion. “And the sky’s always grey,” he sighed.

“Ah yes,” Lam agreed, “it’s time for your clinical depression to meet your seasonal depression.”

“I’m not _depressed_ ,” said Julian irritably. “There’s just nothing good or hopeful about a grey sky.”

“The planet requires a certain degree of hydration, Jules. It’s why we don’t live on Mars.”

“Yet,” said Julian. “Until we ruin that, too,” he added, which somehow made him more depressed.

(Not that he was.)

“Should you really be driving?” asked Lam curiously. “Because if you direct my father’s car into a tree simply to escape the prison of human existence, I will not care for the necessary paperwork.”

“Shut up,” Julian grumbled, reaching out to snatch his wallet back from Lam’s hand. It did not work, however, because even without the use of one arm, Lam’s reflexes were supremely quick. Dance-y bastard.

“We’ll get you one of those lamps they use for lizards,” Lam said. 

“A heat lamp?”

“Sure,” Lam said. “Recreate your own desert ecosystem. You and Sam’s projection can live in your little haunted bubble in your arid microclimate and boom, Vegas. Stardom not included.”

“How come I only conjure Sam, do you think?” Julian asked tangentially, the two of them pausing as they approached Archman’s car in the faculty lot. “It’s never your mother or anything.”

“I don’t know my mother,” Lam said neutrally. “We both know Sam. Plus she’s gotta be relatively fresher, don’t you think? Still on ice somewhere.”

From another person this sort of imagery would be highly unamusing, but this was Lam, so there was no point being offended. “I guess that’s true.”

“Well.” Lam glanced at the car. “Are you going to unlock it or what?”

Julian walked around to the driver side. “I assumed you weren’t—”

He stopped as Lam yanked open the door, sliding into the passenger side.

“Coming,” finished Julian, who sank slowly into the driver’s seat with a sideways glance. “You’ve decided to come along, I take it?”

“Jules, I confess to feeling some responsibility for your well-being,” Lam said in a grave tone of condescension. “I have to assume it’s my natural philanthropic instincts warring with my desire to go back home and take a nap.”

“I’m fine,” Julian said, “and more importantly, you’re much worse off than me.”

“Not when it comes to Renata,” Lam said simply. “You’re like catnip to her. All needy and full of questions only she can answer. She’ll stab you.”

“Stab me?”

“Metaphorically speaking. She’ll roast you over a spit and sprinkle you on her evening digestif.” Lam buckled his seatbelt, waving pointedly to the road. “Shall we?”

“Why doesn’t she affect you?” Julian asked, genuinely curious, and Lam shrugged.

“I didn’t say she didn’t. But sending you alone would be perilously foolish.”

“And as a rule you’re only foolish within the constraints of industry safety regulations?”

“That’s the one,” Lam agreed. “So are we going?”

They didn’t speak much once Julian put the car in drive, though it seemed to Julian that Lam was just as antsy, if not more so. Not for the first time, Julian became sort of musingly taken with the idea that Lam was not merely rude and antisocial, he was shy. 

Perhaps it wasn’t true, but it was more charming to think of it that way.

“Oh,” Renata said when she opened the door to her house, glancing at Lam and then back at Julian. “Is there a reason you’ve brought a small child along with you?”

“It’s not as if he could leave me unattended,” Lam said. 

“Fair point.” Renata crossed her arms over her chest, glancing at Julian, and then gestured into her house. “Come on. Dinner’s almost ready.”

 _Dinner?_ Lam mouthed to Julian, who was equally bewildered. Upon entering the house, he began to question whether he’d strongly misunderstood the context of his visit.

What was once a generalized mess of party-going students and townies was now a fully furnished interior, complete with a noticeably fine centerpiece of a rug and two Victorian armchairs facing an upright, velvet-tufted sofa. Overhead was a small chandelier, previously (to Julian’s memory) only a bare flickering bulb, and as they approached a formal dining area, the smell of food became apparent; some kind of roast chicken, Julian guessed. 

Renata had set two places at the table and was adding a third: place setting, dinner plate, appetizer plate, two forks, a dessert spoon. A water glass and a wine glass.

“What the fuck,” said Lam.

Renata looked up at him. “I like nice things,” she said flatly, adjusting the butter knife and then waltzing into the kitchen, leaving them to remain behind.

Lam took the seat at the head of the table while Julian took the one to his right. “Is this a date?” he whispered to Lam, alarmed.

“To be clear, I never put out right away,” Lam said. “Call me old-fashioned but let’s face it, I am.”

“You two are idiots,” announced Renata from behind them, walking in with a plate of crusty bread and a freshly dressed salad. “Do you really think I live like some kind of swamp creature?”

“Kind of, yes,” said Julian and Lam in unison.

“Shows what you know. Meredith has high standards.” Renata leaned over, adjusting the flowers she’d set at the center of the table. “I suppose this,” she said with a wave around the atmosphere, “is just a habit at this point.”

“Meredith?” Julian asked Lam when Renata disappeared again.

“Thurston,” Lam supplied in an undertone, as Julian blinked.

“But I thought Thurston was the one who hired Iv-”

“Yes,” called Renata, whose hearing was obviously supernaturally keen. “On paper she did. But what choice did she have?” 

She materialized again in the dining room, this time with the chicken Julian had smelled from the kitchen. “It’s resting,” Renata said, adding with a sidelong glance to Lam, “and it was your father who insisted, and the board. She was overruled.”

“So you don’t blame her?” Julian asked.

Renata gave a twitch of a response, more like a pinched nerve than a shrug. “She’s an administrator. What could she have done? Besides getting in bed with the enemy, that is.” She shot a glimpse at Lam, who looked idly at the ceiling. “You know,” she mused faintly, “I’d have a lovely time destroying you, Calamity, if I thought it would cross Archman’s mind at all.”

“Unfortunately for both of us it wouldn’t,” Lam replied cheerfully. 

“Mm, I know. And here I thought _I_ was a pity.” She slid Julian a knowing glance, which he did not return, largely on the basis that he did not know anything about anything. But by then Renata had taken her seat and begun serving herself salad. “Eat,” she said to Julian, who felt a tug, and registered his hand shooting out only after he’d accepted the tongs.

“You’re not going to, er—”

“Imprison you in my sex dungeon?” Renata guessed. “Maybe after dessert.” She smiled at him, delicately placing her salad fork between her teeth before glaring at Lam, who’d torn off a piece of bread with his hands. “There’s a knife right there, you animal.”

“You could have sliced it better,” Lam replied.

“So, about Sam,” Julian cut in, watching Lam jab pointedly into the butter. “You were… friends?”

“I always liked Sam. Thought she was like me at first, though admittedly with looks like hers there’s very little difference between charisma and magic.” Renata paused the motions of her fork, staring into nothing for a moment. “I suppose you could say I took her under my wing,” she said eventually, resuming the practice of eating as Julian looked to Lam for confirmation. “Stop that,” said Renata, catching it. “He didn’t know everything about her.”

Lam moodily tore off another piece of bread.

“Not _everything_ ,” Renata repeated.

Lam tilted his head, reluctantly conceding her point without looking up.

“Sam was full of secrets,” Renata continued. “A mysterious brother, for example.” She gave Julian a thin smile. “All sorts of temporary disappearances.”

“Most of them with you,” Lam remarked to his mangled bread.

“Most, but not all,” Renata breezily agreed. “She was in town a lot.”

“Dives was too isolated. Didn’t suit her.” Lam, to Julian’s ear, seemed to be defending Sam’s impulsivity.

“Yes,” Renata agreed. “But what was she doing and where did she go?”

“I came here assuming you could answer that,” Julian pointed out, taking a tasteless bite of salad.

“Well.” Renata set her fork down beside her plate, folding her hands loosely as she scrutinized him across the table. “You’ll have heard about an altercation between Sam and Andrew Iver?”

Cat had mentioned a disagreement between them. “Something like that, I suppose.”

“It was a ruse.” Renata looked triumphant. “Entrapment. Or would have been, had she finished with her plan.” 

Again, Julian looked at Lam, whose brow was knitted with the beginnings of an argument until Renata slammed a hand down on the table.

“I told you to stop doing that,” she said sharply to Julian, who realized he could no longer turn his head, transfixed as he was by the sound of her voice. “ _I_ would not lie to you. It’s everyone else who has it wrong. Don’t you see? The baby was real, of course, or real enough. Iver’s.” She was still smiling. “It would ruin him. She promised me,” she added, her voice surprisingly lucid given what she was saying. “And Sam never broke a promise.”

It was silent for a moment, and then Renata said idly, “I think he killed her, probably.” 

That makes sense, thought Julian. But then Lam snapped his fingers in front of his face and he reconsidered that maybe it didn’t.

“You can’t possibly think a professor at Dives killed a student,” Lam said.

“After he impregnated her and she threatened to make that information public? I absolutely do,” Renata replied, unfazed.

“But that would mean Sam would have had to—” Lam’s face blanched. “My god, how can you even _visualize_ such a thing?”

“Andrew is extremely proficient in bed,” Renata said, calmly taking another bite of her salad. “As far as I’m concerned, there are much less tolerable methods for revenge.”

Lam looked somewhere between repulsed and morbidly curious. “You really think she slept with him just to... avenge you?”

“He was everything she hated,” Renata said matter-of-factly. “Destroyed my reputation in order to save his own. Rallied the male faculty to his cause by making me out to be a whore and a monster. Forced my own stepmother into a corner, all the while flaunting it in my face.”

That, Julian thought, was very much something Sam would have hated. He also remembered that he’d seen something on her face when she’d appeared the first time with Iver, and the way it had struck him with a memory.

He’d seen it on her face. _Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing._

Was that what he’d recognized? Interest? Deception?

_(You never want to leave on a goodbye.)_

A plan?

_(People want a little hope, just a little, and the more unlikely the better, because it means it’ll really be something if they ever get to see you again—)_

“And anyway, she promised,” Renata concluded brightly, reaching over with a knife as Julian blithely thought _She’ll stab you_.

Instead she carved the chicken, placing a bit of white meat onto Julian’s plate. 

“It seems like you want something from me,” Julian observed quietly.

“Hm? Oh, just a small thing,” Renata agreed. “I hear you’re an orpheus?”

Beside Julian, Lam tensed.

“You can conjure her, can’t you?” Renata pressed.

“Well,” Julian said, swiping a dry tongue over drier lips. “I don’t, uh—”

“A séance of sorts,” Renata said, as Lam choked on bread crumbs, “would allow me to speak with her, to finish out her unfinished business. I mean surely she would want him apprehended somehow,” she said, picking at a wing. “So if you can already conjure her, why wouldn’t you?”

“Uh, because people die doing that,” Lam said, glancing at Julian. “They stroke out, go into cardiac arrest, form clots—”

“Only if they’re weak,” Renata scoffed, turning to Julian. “Are you weak?”

Yes. Very.

“I’m…” Julian cleared his throat. “I’m not, uh. I’d have to do some research,” he said, hoping that seemed reasonable enough. “I have some books on orpheus...es. Orphei. I don’t—” Was it the death part that seemed frightening? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered trying to speak to Sam before. Maybe it was the look on Lam’s face, which was sallow and sick and in some obscure way an echo of Julian’s thoughts: If he could never ask her if he mattered to her, he could believe that he did. And if Lam could never ask her if he’d killed her, maybe they could still live with themselves and be friends. 

Which was shameful, really, when everything about Sam’s last phone call to him suggested this was what she’d wanted him to do.

“I’ll think about it,” Julian said to Renata, whose expression eased with relief. “I have to do some research, but—”

“Soon would be best,” Renata said. “Samhain, you know.”

“That’s not a thing,” Lam muttered to himself.

“It most certainly is,” Renata said.

“Magic is not _paranormal_ , it’s just… it’s physics, it’s brain chemistry—”

“Yeah, sure. So all the evidence for spirits and whatnot are just what, crap?”

“Yes,” Lam drawled caustically, “wild theory, I know—”

“You think all of this stops with you, Calamity Archman? That you just sing a little song and that’s all the magic the world has to offer?”

Julian wasn’t listening, but Lam stood up sharply, tossing his napkin onto the table.

“We’re leaving,” he said to Julian, rounding the edge of the table and walking out of the room.

Renata, by comparison, looked smugly pleased.

“He’ll get over it,” she assured Julian, tilting her head appealingly. “And you’ll do it, won’t you?” she said with a little preening glance.

“Yes” was on the tip of Julian’s tongue until Lam reappeared to drag him out by the collar of his shirt, nearly choking him.

“Ouch, Lam, for fuck’s sake—” Julian clawed at the neckline of his shirt, watching Renata’s laughing smile fade until Lam finally paused on the porch, breathing hard. 

“I know I said I wanted to talk to Sam before, but I didn’t mean it,” Lam said to him in a low voice. “If any part of the afterlife is real, she’s… she’s gotta be fine now, Julian. Just leave it alone.”

“Let her rest in peace, you mean?” Julian asked bitterly, and then, rubbing his neck, he suddenly spat, “Are _you_ at peace, Lam?”

Lam walked to the edge of the porch wordlessly, staring up at the sky. 

“No.” After a moment, Lam turned to look at him. “Come on,” he said, suddenly looking exhausted. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

They took the stairs back to their dorm in silence, trudging up in unison.

“I’ll have to read those books,” Julian said.

“I already read some,” Lam said.

“Figures.” They glanced at each other, then looked away.

“Listen,” Julian said, pausing to face Lam when they reached the landing of the fourth floor. “I don’t know why I trust you—I mean, I obviously shouldn’t,” he said emphatically, “but I do. So as much as I think I might have to do this, if you really think it’s a bad idea—”

“Em?” Lam said, frowning as he gestured behind Julian.

Em was sitting on the floor outside Julian and Lam’s room, methodically banging the back of their head against the door and then looking up when they arrived.

“I need a favor,” Em said sourly, rising to their feet.

“Well, good thing you got here in time, as Julian’s nearly recovered from his bout of criminal activity,” Lam said, and Julian rolled his eyes. “I mean, I’m assuming you need a car stolen? Surely you don’t want our composition notes. We’re terrible students.”

“I’m not,” said Julian.

“Some of us more deluded than others,” Lam whispered loudly to Em.

“Can we talk about this inside?” Em muttered.

“Raunchy. Love that for us,” Lam agreed, shoving open the door and kicking off his shoes as Julian glanced at Em, vaguely concerned by the blank determination he found there.

“Em,” Julian said quietly, “are you okay?”

“I need you to not tell anyone about any of this. Okay?” Em said to neither Lam nor Julian specifically, instead glancing between them. 

“Oh, I know this game,” said Lam, falling back on his bed. “We’ll keep it a secret if you tell us yours.”

Em grimaced. “That’s just me giving up two secrets.”

“Right, well, we don’t know yet what you’re asking from us,” Lam reminded them. “If you came to us, it’s obviously fucked up or illegal.”

“It’s not either of those things Calamity, you shitass—”

“I always thought you knew something we didn’t,” Lam added softly, so softly that at first, Julian thought it was a threat.

But based on the silence that followed, it must have been something else entirely.

“I’ll tell you after. _If_ it works,” Em said firmly.

“If what works?” asked Julian, but Em was fixating on Lam.

Specifically, on Lam’s broken arm.

“What are you doing?” Lam asked, instantly guarded when Em bent down on their knees, eyeing the cast. “Okay seriously, I know I’m a dick but if you’re hoping for violence—”

“ _I didn’t see this coming, I admit it_ ,” Em sang hoarsely, reaching out to rest a hand on Lam’s broken arm. “ _But if you think I’ll buckle, forget it. I told you that I’d be the one, I’ll be there in the life to come—_ ”

“Hi, what the fuck,” Lam said to Em, who ignored him.

“ _You think I lost my vision but I didn’t. It sounds like heaven, but it isn’t. Through fields of amber we will run, somewhere in the life to come_ —”

“Ouch,” Lam said suddenly, eyes widening. “Em, ow, Em, Em _fuck_ —”

“ _This is not a shakedown_ ,” Em sang, focusing solely on Lam’s arm and not Lam himself, who was writhing with discomfort, glancing at Julian with a frenetic sort of alarm. “ _Let go of the blame. Have a little faith in me, girl, just dropkick the shame_ —”

“Em,” Julian said uncertainly, unsure if he should interrupt.

“ _If you call my name, I will run whether or not it’s tonight, or the life to come—_ ”

Lam shut his eyes, teeth gritted. Em’s forehead had begun beading with sweat, and Julian sat on Lam’s other side, bracing him.

“ _I know sometimes you think that I regret it_ ,” Em sang stonily, “ _but I don’t remember stumbling when I said it. I told you that I’d be the one, I was talking about the life to come_ —”

Lam let out a strangled yell, panting, and then abruptly stopped, yanking his arm from Em’s grip and stumbling to his feet, nearly collapsing when he tripped over Julian.

“What the—” Lam stared down at his arm. “Jules, get… get a knife, get—”

“Here,” said Em, expressionlessly handing a large boxcutter to Lam that they appeared to have kept in their pocket. 

“Julian, cut it open.” Lam thrust his arm out to Julian, who stared at him. “The _cast_ , Jules, not the fucking arm!”

“What? But Lam—”

“It wasn’t enough for Sam,” Em said, rising to their feet and backing slowly away. “I’m sorry.”

“Julian,” Lam said hysterically. “Jules for fuck’s sake, just give me the knife—”

He snatched it from Julian, stabbing into the material of his cast and attempting, very badly, to pry it open. “Lam,” Julian half-shouted, “are you insane? Jesus _Christ_ —”

“Help me,” Lam said, his eyes dark with panic, and because Julian could not seem to find the words for WHY WOULD I DO THAT, he deepened the cut Lam had made, dragging it down through the plaster until he was able to crack the material into two uneven pieces.

“Christ, fuck,” Lam said, shaking himself free and ripping away what remained, flexing his hand; bending slowly, fearfully at the elbow, and then half-flailing, shuddering like he’d been somehow covered in ants.

Lam collapsed back to the bed, staring down at his own arm like it was someone else’s.

“How,” Julian said, looking up for Em, who was standing at a distance, beside the door. “You… you fixed it?”

“I fixed it,” Em echoed, unmoved.

“It’s… shit,” Lam said. “Shit, Em!”

“I know,” said Em dully.

“But—” Lam’s brow furrowed. “But what do you mean it wasn’t enough for Sam?”

Julian, who had been staring again at Lam’s arm, looked up then.

“It works,” Lam said pointedly to Em, moving his arm for emphasis. “So what’s the explanation?”

“I don’t have one. I just know I must not have fixed her. I’m sorry,” Em said again. “I just needed to know if I could… yeah.” They looked guiltily at Julian. “Sorry.”

“Em.” Lam seemed to have put together something Julian hadn’t, scrambling unexpectedly to his feet. “Em, if you’re trying to fix Olympia—”

But whatever he planned to say was too late, because Em was already gone.

* * *

The sun was coming up by the time Lam and Julian realized they hadn’t gone to bed, opting instead to sit on the roof and stare out over campus, half-freezing to death.

“Was she sick?” Julian asked for the eightieth time.

“I don’t know,” said Lam. His answers had cycled between that and “no” and “how could that have been possible” and “Jules for fuck's sake shut up” over the last several hours. 

“Was she sleeping with Iver?” Julian asked, even more repulsed now than the last time.

“I don’t know,” said Lam dully.

But then something—exhaustion, maybe—made him keep going.

“I wasn’t seeing a lot of her at the time,” Lam admitted, and with a glance Julian could tell this was shameful for him; unforgivable in retrospect. “I thought… I’d started to think she didn’t want me around. Plus I already knew she was seeing Nero, so honestly I—” He broke off. “I just didn’t want to be around her.”

“You were angry because she picked him,” Julian said in a low voice. “You still are.” The first was an observation, the second an accusation.

“No,” Lam said irritably, “I was angry because she kept insisting that she _hadn’t_ picked him. I mean this was Sam—I would have accepted it!" he growled. "She didn’t have to _lie_ to me—”

“Maybe she didn’t lie,” Julian said, adding with a sigh, “Sam did have plenty of meaningless sex.”

“Not with me,” Lam replied grimly, and Julian blanched, uninterested in knowing details.

“Wonderful, Calamity. I’m sure the sex was emotive and fulfilling for you, but—”

“No, I mean she didn’t have sex with me. At all.” Julian frowned, and Lam shrugged. “She kissed me a few times, and we slept in her bed, but she wouldn’t touch me, not like that. She said I was—” Lam exhaled. “She said I wasn’t hers.”

“Oddly selfless of her,” Julian commented mildly.

“She could be selfless for some people.” Lam scratched his temple, rising to his feet. He tested his hand once or twice, putting weight on it before launching himself through the window. “You should talk to Nero,” he said to Julian. “He was with her more than I was. He might know things I didn’t.” A pause, and a grimace. “Em clearly did.”

Julian could see it was a concession. Not just a concession, but a white flag; surrender, defeat. Lam, who’d been so protective of his relationship with Sam—of his intimacy with her—was now, for once, confessing that he had not known everything. 

And possibly had not known anything, in the scheme of things. 

“Lam,” Julian called after him, but Lam was gone. Probably would be for the next few days, if prior behavior suggested anything. But it was nearly morning, so Julian did the only thing he could think to do. He picked up the songbook, _For Julian_ , and he left his empty bedroom.

He went downstairs and knocked on Graves Nero’s door.

“You okay?” Graves asked, his hair tousled from sleep, his green eyes bright with concern. He was shirtless, as Lam so often was, but in place of a sun clearing the mountaintops there was a blankness disturbed only by a jagged scar. Beside it, on the inside of his arm, there was a burn, like from the butt of a cigarette.

Graves’ eyes traveled over Julian’s rumpled appearance to the notebook in his hand, and then back up to his face.

“I need you to help me remember some things,” Julian said, clearing his throat.

Graves nodded slowly, then stepped aside.

“Come on in,” he said, the door closing slowly behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs this week are "Life to Come" and "Rising of the Tide." Thanks for following along!


	9. If Destiny's Kind

Calamity Archman saved Graves Nero’s life by parting the waters of the lake and plucking him out by the scruff of his neck, no different from the way a person might have rescued and then reprimanded a curious but careless puppy. This was not really as impressive as it sounds, because a lake is not a sea or an ocean and it was mostly like imagining the water was glass and then knocking part of it to the side, which was easy to do. Not much resistance. Which isn’t to say it was wholly unimpressive, but it always sounded much stranger to say aloud than it had felt at the moment Lam had done it. He’d seen Graves, who was then not-Graves (but Lam was not so horrible a person that he forced people to remain things they no longer were) and he’d thought well, that’s no good. That’s no good at all. So then he’d stopped an ugly situation from happening, which as far as he was concerned was closer to accountability than a miracle. He could do things like that from time to time, if he felt up for it, and never bothered to wonder why.

Catastrophe had been with him, as she perpetually was in those days. They were mostly left to their own devices, having had a mother who died while they were babies and a father who sort of gave it the ol’ college try but couldn’t ultimately keep up with them once they no longer depended upon him for their day-to-day survival. Once they were capable of using the plumbing and dressing themselves, Professor Edward Archman seemed to already see his children as a set of small, odd adults who occasionally couldn’t sort out simple math or do basic things, like drive and fix the plumbing they so obviously knew how to use. He did feel confident in their intellects, their ability to read and reason and such, and so he assured them at a very early age that in his mind, that was paramount to trust. “You’re not idiots, are you?” he said during something Lam liked to think of as a sort of family summit, though it was probably just breakfast. “If you need something from me then by all means ask, but I hardly think it’s necessary for me to set rules. Do you?”

Catastrophe was enamored with their father, which was not to say that Lam was not, but it was hard not to notice the way Professor Archman’s identity was not remotely shaped by his children, nor even the fact that he had children, nor that they were children at all. Professor Archman had made it very clear to Lam, if not Cat, that he had strongly disliked their mother and they should reserve no idolatry for her in her absence. “Everyone is of course entitled to their opinion, and she wasn’t entirely monstrous,” he explained in his professorial way. “But she was monumentally self-interested and I find it hard to imagine she might have cared much at all how either of you turned out.” Lam had been eight at the time.

So anyway, Cat had been there, shading her eyes and saying very calmly that a boy had fallen into the lake and couldn’t Lam do something about it, and Lam said I can’t imagine what you want me to do about it and she said well, I suppose you could jump in and save him, and Lam said he didn’t particularly feel up for a swim. So Cat got a bit moody as she sometimes did (she had a tendency towards passive-aggressiveness that Professor Archman had said was a hallmark trait of their mother) and sort of gave Lam the cold shoulder in annoyance, which he hated. He didn’t like it when Cat was upset with him and anyway, he didn’t want the boy in the lake to die. He just didn’t want to get wet, so instead he dragged Cat onto an emergency raft and parted the lake and anyway, you’ve heard that part already, so by now it’s probably very boring. Graves did not really witness the event, having been on the brink of death as he so impractically was, and Lam had specifically asked Cat not to tell him.

“Why not?” she said. “If I saved someone’s life I think I’d want them to know about it.”

“He’s going to be all weird about it,” Lam said. 

“Well, I like him,” she said, looking as she had when she’d looked down at Graves with his blue lips. She had stroked a finger over them, thinking in the way Cat did, which was quiet and very secretive. Expressionless, usually, so that even Lam, who knew her better than anyone, did not know what she was thinking. “I think we should be his friends.”

“You can be his friend,” Lam said. “I got him out of the lake for you.”

“Well, if he’s my friend he’s got to be your friend,” Cat pointed out, rising to her feet from the dock and shading her eyes from the sun. “It’d be terribly inconvenient if I had to split my time.”

In those days, they thought of each other as sort of a foregone conclusion, much in the way a person with a right hand expects to also have a left. By Lam’s estimation, neither of them had actually sorted out yet that they weren’t one indivisible unit. He always secretly thought if he accidentally got too far from Cat he’d stop working, a bit like how walkie-talkies only worked within a certain radius. Lam once told Sam Kinney that up until Cat and Graves began doing things alone together, Lam had always assumed that Cat was his built-in insurance policy. Constant companionship was something of a survival technique, given that feeding themselves and dealing with being oddities at school was easier with two heads than one.

“Fine,” Lam said unhappily. “He’s probably very sad and awkward anyway.” Truthfully the idea of a friend was kind of exciting, because he had none and his father had none and anyway, he was starting to think it was all a bit of a myth. Although he wasn’t convinced that pulling one out of the lake was the way one typically went about it. Friendship, that is.

“You’re sad and awkward,” Cat pointed out. “You’ll notice it doesn’t deter me in any significant way.”

“Fair point,” said Lam, and so they sought out Graves again, who in addition to his lake-related maladies had a broken finger and a two-day old black eye from “tripping down the stairs,” which was quite an unlikely excuse for someone who’d already drowned once that week. Either he was exceptionally clumsy or a liar, and Lam was fairly certain he was no more a liar than most.

At first Graves was more Lam’s friend than Cat’s, probably because Cat could be very overwhelming when you first met her—especially if you were a prepubescent boy who wasn’t her twin brother, as most prepubescent boys were. Not that Graves had had to explain to either of them what was going on in his life once they entered the squalid residence in which he lived. Both the Archman twins had read Dickens and Roald Dahl and all the other Brits very thoroughly, and felt they had a fairly good understanding of how to notice when adults were very very bad at adulting. Their own father was at best neglectful, which was actually convenient as far as parental weaknesses went, because they did get more done in a day than the average child. Well, they were teenagers by then, but only barely.

Lam wasn’t sure what happened that day. Not because it wasn’t worth committing to memory—he recalled, for instance, that Graves somehow managed to find their house later that evening to ask if he could stay the night in order to avoid some sort of municipal child-snatching scheme (social services, not that any of them fully understood what that was at the time)—but because he’d had one of his blackouts that day. He remembered going to visit Graves, noticing the old bruises and empty bottles strewn around the barely inhabitable house, and then Lam was pretty sure he and Cat returned home for a late breakfast with their father, which was when he began to suffer the swaying sensation of vertigo that typically preceded a migraine. (Or so he was told, though as Lam told the doctors up until he decided to stop trusting doctors, he did not suffer migraines.) 

He woke at night to find Graves at his front door.

“Who’s this?” asked Professor Archman, who’d answered. He’d been on his way out at the moment Graves had come to visit them.

“My friend,” said Lam quickly, because Cat was being very quiet in that way that meant she didn’t want to be the one to displease their father. “You said we could have visitors whenever we liked, didn’t you?”

“You’re meant to warn me first,” said Professor Archman. “As a courtesy.”

“I’m essentially a child,” Lam replied. “What do I know?”

“True,” acknowledged Professor Archman. “Well, consider this a lesson, then.”

Graves had glanced warily between father and son, nervously wringing his hands. Endlessly needy, Graves Nero. Someday if given the opportunity Lam would love to say that to a biographer, which surely Graves would one day have. “Oh yes, I knew him before he was anything,” Lam would say, “but even then he was like a black hole of a person.” It would be a very jazzy sort of quote, meaningless in exactly the right way. It would paint Graves as mysterious but of course he would never thank Lam for it, because it was also an insult. It meant: You either fall into the world of appeasing Graves Nero and bounce back somewhere entirely different in time and space, or else you get fucking swallowed up. But Lam would not tell anyone that part, because it was private.

Anyway, somehow Graves’ father had asphyxiated to death. Choking, they said. Probably an accident. They were trying to track down Graves’ mother, whom Graves felt certain would show up for the life insurance payout or at very least the house. They whispered about this together with Lam in his bed, which was across from Cat’s, and Graves on the floor between them. Cat was being quiet, so Lam was doing most of the talking. Eventually Cat turned away, presumably to sleep.

“Did you do it?” Lam said softly to Graves. 

“I wish I had,” Graves replied, “but no.”

Then Graves shivered a bit because they didn’t have proper things for guests like sleeping bags, so Lam lifted his duvet and gestured him in. Graves was taller than Lam back then, with a headstart on his growing.

“Would you like me to sing you something?” Lam said.

“That’s a bit of an odd offer,” said Graves.

“Our father is a composer.” Lam had not known then that most fathers did not pace about humming murderously to themselves, as if doing so might unlock a spare bit of genius they’d left in the corner of their minds. Like spare coins between couch cushions. 

“Well, alright,” said Graves, and Lam sang some sailor’s chanty he’d been playing with in his head because the rhymes were silly and simple, and then Graves sort of joined in, which was when Lam got unfortunately quite excited and suggested that maybe if Graves (he would be Graves from now on) tried very hard, then he could go to Dives and be a bard like Lam and Catastrophe. Which in Lam’s mind was a foregone conclusion for his life, much like the idea of himself as one half of Cat’s whole.

“She makes me feel strange,” Graves breathed into Lam’s shoulder, his eyes closed, already half asleep and saturating Lam’s entire right side with warmth.

“She has that effect on people,” Lam solemnly agreed, which felt like an adult thing to say, and then he closed his eyes and allowed himself to be carried off to sleep.

Later, when Sam Kinney pulled Lam aside and told him his destiny, Lam’s first thought would be oh, so that explains that, then. The comfort he found beside Graves had been until then relatively unknown, causing him to wrestle with all sorts of tangled things inside himself that later he would work out slowly, piece by piece: jealousy, anger, betrayal. Because eventually Cat would decide she was ready to stop being quiet and she would turn on all that shine, and then Graves was in her bed and at her beck and call and it was like Lam was no longer anything. And Lam would think I never wanted him anyway, but then again he would ask himself why, if that were true, had he kept letting Graves in, kept protecting him, and eventually he would also ask himself, did I kill this man’s father just to keep him safe? And part of him would say I don’t know, but if I had a chance I think I’d probably have done it. And then eventually he would think maybe, probably, I did.

Ironically it became a reason for Graves to turn away from him, to be repulsed by him. “You really don’t know what happens to you?” Graves demanded once when Lam woke up on the living room floor and couldn’t remember how he’d gotten home from school. Graves’ voice had been edged with something, revulsion, maybe terror, maybe the particular kind of disgust that comes from fear. 

You said you would have killed him yourself, Lam wanted to say. You said that, so why are you so angry if I did it for you? How can you hate me for something like that?

Instead he closed up, zipped himself into a state of forced neutrality. Graves and Cat had both reinvented themselves by then. All of this was slow, actually. Cat turning her eyes on Graves had taken a year, maybe more, and Graves had not been hers yet, not entirely, until later. By the time they were all seniors Cat was flourishing, thriving, like she’d consciously decided to break out of her cocoon and sprout wings. Lam was “difficult,” you know, “not for everyone,” “oh gosh my brother can be so odd,” as if Lam had personally invented disliking crowds and being generally of the opinion that people were idiots. Cat had also starred in the spring musical in a performance the local newspaper called “captivating.”

“That would be the magical DNA,” commented Lam.

“Fuck off,” said Cat smugly.

They were still mostly friends at eighteen, when Cat convinced him to get tattoos, matching but not matching. “You be the sun and I’ll be the moon,” she said, which Lam had pointed out was not really appropriate because he was not joyful or passionate or whatever else the sun was supposed to stand for.

“It’s because you’re the golden boy,” Cat joked, not very jokingly.

“Dad is literally the only person who likes me more than you,” Lam said. “And it’s not that great, by the way. He doesn’t actually treat me any differently.”

“Graves likes you better too,” she said.

“Uh, false,” Lam pointed out, though Cat ignored him.

“It makes sense. It’s like Artemis and Apollo,” she said, and Lam relented because he hadn’t really seen her around much and was starting to wonder things he’d never had to wonder about her thoughts before, like whether she also considered their history teacher to be a racist (and not even a very subtle one) or if she ever thought about the fact that he could part water with his mind and conjure fire sometimes when the air quality was right and also maybe, possibly, asphyxiate people to death, or what Graves tasted like. He’d just felt sort of honored, in a way, that he still fit into the mythos of how Cat saw herself.

Later Sam Kinney would tell Lam that the waves of enmity he’d been feeling from his sister were real, but not what he thought. “Don’t you see it? She tries so hard,” Sam said, “and you never, ever have to try.”

It was true that Lam didn’t try, but he was also not fully alive, if you thought about it. Portions of his life were gone from him. Hours, days, who even knew how much time he’d actually lost. He’d relied on his sister to fill in the blanks for most of them until she was gone, and then he just had to rely on physical evidence. Like Sherlock Holmes but for his own scrapes and bruises.

He started checking the newspaper just in case, especially if anyone died mysteriously, or of something unexplained. He didn’t _think_ he was a serial killer, but what did he know? He had dreams sometimes and saw things he had never seen before, things he couldn’t prove had or hadn’t happened. Not like Olympia’s night terrors, which were thrashing and ugly, dangerous. Only the inside of Lam’s head was dangerous, because he was always calm in the dreams, almost serene. He would look down at his hands and feel confident they were extensions of him, doing his will, even if he felt powerless and aching when he woke.

“It does seem unusual,” Sam had said to him when he told her, the first person he’d ever really told, because not even Graves had been worth telling. He just suspected Lam of things, suspiciously. He viewed Lam through the lens of someone looking for reasons to keep him at arm’s length.

“I envy you,” Sam had said.

“What?” Lam barked, because in his mind he had just said oh yes, I might be a horrible person sometimes, I don’t really know, I think maybe there are people in this world I want dead, or at least there was one once and now I’m forever wondering if there will be others, but apparently what _Sam_ had heard was ha ha I can do cool stuff with my mind.

“I just mean that at least you have control,” Sam said. “I can’t control anything. I just see things, and by the time I see them it’s too late.”

Lam didn’t feel in control. He was in love with her, so that was strike one. He felt actively unhinged around her, like maybe she unmade him piece by piece and he just kept on saying more, more. Take whatever you want, just don’t go.

“Like you,” Sam said. “I know I can’t have you.” She would say it many times over the following two years, that they were not each other’s destinies. That she knew hers and she knew his but she wouldn’t tell him, because it sucked. It sucked to know the answers. 

“If it’s my fault, I apologize,” Lam said, thinking he’d probably do something stupid to push her away like accidentally blackout and kill her mom, and she laughed.

“No, it’s not your fault. I don’t think.”

“Lots of people date the people they don’t end up with.”

“Yeah, but not this time.” 

“Why not?”

“Because.” Because, because. It went around in circles, her supposedly not wanting him but not wanting to let him go, either. Her whispering stay with me and curving into him until they were both right there, so close to the edge, ready and wanting, and then she’d say no no we can’t, we can’t. He was beginning to understand how Anne Boleyn had overthrown the Vatican.

It helped at first that Sam hated Graves too, and saw something in him that was repulsive, small, gorging itself on the feelings of others. At first it had been perfect, so perfect that Lam was willing to be friends with Graves again, to laugh, because he had Sam, whom Graves so obviously wanted. Graves and Cat were on and off, always looking for something better, something besides each other. Cat would go quiet in her quiet way and then it was like Graves woke up from something, a coma, and started craving something else. Sam could see this, which delighted Lam, and made him happier. Made him happy, for once. Okay, maybe Sam wouldn’t belong to him, but what did he need that sort of permanency for? Better a library book to be borrowed and known, a story kept forever, than some kind of heirloom, tucked away and never touched. 

He didn’t know what happened, why Sam changed her mind; why what had been so revolting about Graves later became desirable. He knew she struggled with it, because she’d told him so. “Graves isn’t for me either,” she’d said, and when Lam said but if he and Graves were exactly the same in terms of destinies then how come she had said yes to Graves and not him, and she said because, because she knew what happened to them, because Lam would thank her someday.

He did not think he would.

Ultimately Sam would confess who her own destiny was and Lam got swallowed up by it, instantly overwrought. YOU COULD CHOOSE, he shouted at her, YOU GET A CHOICE IN THIS, and she laughed hysterically and sobbed I can’t, I can’t. PLEASE MAKE A DIFFERENT CHOICE? he attempted, and she said no, no, it doesn’t work like that. HOW DO YOU KNOW HOW IT WORKS? he said and she said I have to believe it, I have to, because you have to get the end that’s coming for you Calamity, and I have to get mine. It’s what the both of us deserve.

“I get what I deserve every day,” he said bitterly. Not you, not you, not you.

“No, Calamity,” she said, taking his face in her hands. “No, believe me, you don’t. But you will.”

Lam snapped himself out of his thoughts and flexed his right hand, bending his elbow. He’d been doing it obsessively since Em healed him. He thought about asking Em if they’d ever tried it without singing, how long it’d been happening, if maybe this was more than just being a bard. Maybe for as weird as they both were, the truth was even weirder. Sometimes, like Renata had so obnoxiously pointed out, Lam did have to wonder if there was more.

The clock struck five past seven in the evening and Lam walked into the small meeting room in the town community center, taking a seat. He hadn’t wanted to be early, figuring she’d bolt. 

“Welcome, welcome,” said the group leader, who was probably some sort of counselor or therapist. He’d know if he looked her up, probably, though she wasn’t who he was there to see. “I see we have some new faces,” the counselor said, nodding to Lam and a few of the others in the small circle; maybe nine or ten others. “And of course some of our usuals. Who would like to start us off?” Silence. “Olympia,” the counselor said kindly, “would you like to begin with a story?”

Olympia looked up at Lam, then away. “I’m actually not feeling well,” she said. If Lam had said it, it would have been curt and rude, but it was Olympia, so it was mostly demurred.

“Oh.” The counselor looked puzzled. “Well you’re welcome to sit quietly and listen today, if you’d like—”

“No, I actually think I have to go home now.” Olympia rose sharply to her feet, shooting out the door like an arrow, and Lam immediately stood and followed, passing the GRIEF COUNSELING sign on the door. 

“Olympia—”

“ _Stop_ following me,” she hissed over her shoulder, and Lam sighed, but sped up, jogging slightly to catch her.

“Olympia, I just need to ask—”

“I don’t want to talk to you.” She rounded on him, eyes full of tears. “I’m exhausted, Lam,” she said, and looked it. “I’m tired. Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear i-”

“I kept your secret,” he said quietly, and she flinched. “I kept it, and this whole time you were keeping something from me, weren’t you?”

“Lam.” She turned her head away, swiping angrily at her eyes. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Because you can’t forgive me?”

She said nothing. 

“I’m not asking for forgiveness. I can’t forgive me either,” he attempted.

Silence.

“I didn’t understand it,” he said, explaining himself because there was nothing else to do or say. “I didn’t know why you were so angry with me. Why you really believed that I would—” He broke off, rubbing his temple with his thumb. “Everyone thinks I did it but they don’t, not really. Nobody actually believes it except for fucking Nero,” he muttered, “who’s a goddamn idiot, and you. But you’re not stupid.”

She didn’t look up.

“I thought she was coming to these with you. For you,” Lam said. “For… you know. Emotional support.” The guidebook called it a support group for fatal diagnoses and loss.

Olympia turned her head again, folding her arms over her chest.

“O, please.” Lam heard his voice crack. “Was she… was she sick?” he asked, and Olympia’s posture changed, her brow visibly furrowing. “Did she have… Was something…?”

“You didn’t know?” Olympia looked up sharply. “But she told you everything.”

“Yeah, well, obviously I missed something.” He heard the anger in his tone and thought in Sam’s voice: nope, not right now, Calamity, not now. It’s the feeling things that’ll kill ya.

By contrast, Olympia’s anger softened. “But if you didn’t know—” 

“I’m not saying I didn’t know. I’m—” He grimaced. “I’m saying I don’t know if I knew or not,” he mumbled.

She frowned. “But that doesn’t—”

“Just answer the question, Olympia, please.” Lam Archman did not often beg, but he was highly utilitarian. He used the tools at his disposal. He had been doing the math since his encounter with Em, and it did not look good. In fact it looked dismal, and worse than that it looked terminal.

“She’s sick,” Sam had told him quietly one night, first year, while they were keeping watch over Olympia. “I can’t decide whether to tell her.”

“What kind of sick?” Lam asked. 

“Something neurodegenerative. Probably early onset Parkinson’s, from what I can tell,” Sam said, and Lam shivered unintentionally. “The night terrors? That’s because she loses the ability to maintain paralysis in sleep. I looked it up.” She said it in such a dull, lifeless tone. “I could get her medicine or something,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows brightening. “I bet Renata could get it.”

“You think Renata Stirling could get her hands on experimental Parkinson’s drugs?” Lam asked doubtfully. “I thought she just smoked weed and did molly.”

“Renata’s resourceful,” Sam said, and paused to think. “Is it morally wrong if I crush them up into her food or something? Or like, does she actually need to know.”

“Uh,” said Lam, which was intended to mean you can’t just drug people, Samara.

“Ugh. Hate when you’re right.” Sam sighed, flopping into her side and looking over at Olympia’s twitching form while Lam curled around her, breathing in the garden smell of her drugstore shampoo. “I guess I’ll have to tell her.”

“No, don’t.” He kissed the side of Sam’s neck. “Just take her to see a doctor. There’s one in town that’s free, it’s a women’s clinic.”

“Like for abortions?”

“God, Sam.” He smothered a laugh at the top of her spine. “They do more than that. Though yes, that’s where Cat gets her birth control.” She’d made him come with her more than once when they were in high school, because the high school only provided condoms and nothing else. “They’ll see you without health insurance.”

“Gosh, you’re so _informed_ ,” Sam whispered playfully. “Like a grown-up. Or an alien.” She flipped onto her other side to look at him, and he tucked her hair behind one ear.

“What do I die of?” he asked her.

“Sarcasm.” She kissed his nose.

“No, really.”

“I’m not telling, Cal.”

“Why not?”

“Just trust me.”

He rolled his eyes, but relented. “Okay. What do _you_ die of?”

“Not sure, though I think it’s coming soon,” she said very seriously, and he frowned. “What?” she asked, propping her head up with one hand.

“Are you serious?”

“Serious as the heart attack I’m probably not going to die of,” she said jokingly.

“Sam, that’s—”

“I’m not sure,” she repeated. “But the last thing I see is always glimpses of the sky through… something like a window. Like I’m underwater, looking up at the cliffs.” She shrugged. “It’s weird though, because I’m a fucking fantastic swimmer. Also, ouch.”

He was clutching her too hard, afraid she’d somehow slip away too early. “Sorry—”

“It’s not that bad to die young,” she said. “I just don’t want to waste away.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I won’t,” she agreed. “I wouldn’t let myself.”

He chuckled. “You’ll fight death?”

“I just won’t let myself _rot_ ,” she corrected, rolling over him until he was flat on his back, her legs astride his, both of them rendered a little breathless. “Getting kind of hot and bothered just thinking about it,” she said in a hoarse whisper, reading his mind, and he swallowed a dry laugh.

“Thinking about death, you mean?”

“I just don’t want to be nothing,” she said, stroking his hair. “I don’t want to grow old and die alone like my mom, just wasting away to dust in Vegas. I don’t want to be sick, I don’t want to watch myself decay. If I’m going to die, then I want to be young,” she said, tracing his mouth, “and alive,” she murmured, stroking her thumb down his throat, “and beautiful.”

She touched her lips to his gently, inhaling his sigh.

“You’ll always be beautiful to me,” he managed, and she smiled, triumphant. 

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll make sure of it.” She rolled off him, twisting to face him again. “Now you tell me something,” she said. “A secret.”

“My father is sleeping with Thurston.”

“That’s not a secret,” Sam scoffed. “Try again.”

“Fine. Cat and Graves are—”

“About _you_ ,” she said emphatically, and he was quiet for a moment.

“I might have killed someone,” he said, waiting for her to look at him like Graves had, but instead she kissed his knuckles and burrowed deeper into the blankets.

“You wouldn’t hurt a fly, Calamity Archman,” she whispered sleepily to him. “Not unless they asked for it.”

“Lam?”

He blinked, realizing Olympia was still staring at him.

“Did you hear me?” she said, pale-faced, and he realized yes, he’d heard _something_ , something like stage 4 and metastatic and thought it was something completely different at first but then it wasn’t, and then Lam started saying something he wished he could take back.

“I think she might have wanted me to kill her. I think—” A swallow. “I think if she asked me to, I would have.”

Her expression didn’t change.

“I know,” Olympia said. 

So there it was, then. How very simple. Elegant, really. 

“Okay,” Lam said, and turned to start walking, but Olympia called after him with a sigh.

“I can’t just let you walk away right now, Lam,” she said, sounding frustrated and angry, as if the last thing she wanted was to care about his welfare. “Lam, where are you going?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” he shouted back, because if he was going to die in a car accident on the way home from accosting their friend at grief therapy for her terminal illness, Sam would have told him that was a dick move. She would have told him. She _should_ have told him.

Had she told him? 

He shut his eyes, shivering in the cold, and tested out several volumes of “fuck” until it became clear that shouted was the most cathartic. He howled a little, just to expel something tight from his chest, and then lay down in the middle of the street. 

He should probably get his things, he thought, before Julian found out and hated him.

Julian. It had sounded so strange the first time he’d heard Julian Kinney’s name.

“Who the fuck is that?” Lam had said.

Sam, on the other hand, had smiled brilliantly. 

“Your destiny,” she said, which was now such an incredibly ludicrous thought that Lam started to laugh, and couldn’t stop.

* * *

Julian had opened his eyes that morning to the knowledge that he was not in his own bed, which made the sensation of awakening that much stranger. Oh yes, he’d stayed up all night asking Lam questions that chased themselves in circles and then he’d decided he wanted to feel something new, something else. He sat upright groggily and turned to look down at the body warming the spot beside him.

“A solid two hours,” announced Graves, peering at his phone screen and lying back down with a groan. “Well done us.”

Graves’ hair was matted against the pillow, the grey warmth outside his window saturating the room in something shy of gloom. In daylight it was more obvious how small it was, though Julian had a feeling Graves had never known much finery. To him the Archmans, as close to old money as this town contained, must have been like one of those old Gothic houses, all romanticized and haunted. Being with Cat must feel like an inheritance, the approval Graves could never get anywhere else, and still he’d fallen in love with Sam, the outsider. Like him.

“Penny for your thoughts?” said Graves, glancing up at Julian.

They’d talked about Sam; about what it had been like to make guesses about her, and then to know her. The way she’d been so resistant to Graves until it became painfully obvious they’d both only been fighting something obvious, something inevitable. Twin cores of whatever their insides were. Such a vastness, a cavernous aching, as wide and endless as the horizon. 

And as imaginary, too. 

Over the intimacy of dawn, Graves’ confession of his and Sam’s mercurial affair—part burning resentment, part vulnerable helplessness—had felt meaningful. In the light of day, Julian realized that two people sleeping together in secret because they were attractive and desperate for physicality that felt like something bigger than it was wasn’t actually that deep. 

It wasn’t as if Julian didn’t know that impulse perfectly well. 

He sat up fully, pinching the bridge of his nose as Graves mirrored him, puzzlement manifesting between his brows.

“Something wrong?” Graves asked.

Julian reached for his clothes in silence, a sudden weight filling his chest. Graves' lips brushed the midpoint of his spine and he closed his eyes.

“I think I’d like to do the séance,” he said eventually, and Graves nodded, his chin digging into Julian’s back.

“I figured you would.”

“You don’t think it’s a bad idea?” Julian asked, twisting around to face him and regretting it mildly the moment he did. 

He hadn’t really known what had come over him aside from the usual rush in his ears; the noisy, clanging sense in his veins that something was buzzing and alive, something that needed to be quieted, that touch could do it. That someone else’s touch would fix things for long enough to drift dreamlessly to sleep. 

Self-medicating, the doctor had said. The mind tried to heal itself, the body craved what it needed, and really they were all just powerless to it, to being small and lonely creatures made of instincts and impulse. It wasn’t just Julian’s problem, but he was more given to it than most. 

“I think a conjuring may damage you,” Graves said, “and there’s no guarantee that it will work.”

Julian stiffened, trying to think what it was about this that felt so unpleasant. Sometimes it just happened that way, the side effects of this or any drug. Sometimes he just fell asleep euphoric and woke up emptied out.

“You want me to be small,” Julian murmured, his lips numb.

“What?” Graves had genuinely not heard him.

“You want me to be small,” he repeated. “No, you want me to suspect myself of smallness.” He reached for his socks, the shoes he’d shoved his feet into last night. “You want me to be like you and Sam,” Julian said to empty air, “tripping over myself to know why I exist.”

“What?” This time Graves was insulted, or hurt. He sat up, staring at Julian with obvious injury, maybe because he’d thought this whole time that Julian had processed the memories the way he had, with his interpretations attached. But every moment of Sam that Julian had gotten back as a result of his night with Graves had shown him something old that he’d forgotten.

“She was vindictive,” Julian said, pulling his shirt over his head. “Petty. Wonderful when she wanted to be, cold when she didn’t.” He remembered the unexplained closed doors, _get out Julian not now_ , his mind always chasing its tail, eating itself, never understanding what he’d done wrong. He remembered her tears over Orpheus and Eurydice; her tears that were not for love or loss, but for the stupidity of a man who could have everything in his grasp and still somehow manage to fuck it up. He remembered that Sam had left him behind, left him alone with the woman she’d most hated in life, knowing full well he would have gladly come with her if she’d asked. He remembered now that he wasn’t that surprised, not actually, because the nights of coming to on a stranger's bathroom floor only to find that she’d gone home with someone else were a thousand little abandonments to precede the one that would last. 

He remembered that Sam was the kind of person who could push away the people who loved her most purely because guilt didn’t suit her, it irritated her—easier to ignore it, shove it aside until she was ready to come back for it, calling his name from the back of a restaurant because her terms were the one that mattered. Because she was selfish and young, and magical, but unwilling to share it until it was already too late. 

“You think it’s romantic that you fell in love,” Julian said, picking up the notebook with her lyrics, all the words she’d written from everything she’d known, “but it’s not beautiful. It’s not even real. It’s just two people wanting each other because they don’t know how to be enough on their own.”

“Julian.” Graves was on his feet, tugging up his boxers and tripping to reach Julian before his hand settled on the door. “What’s going on? I thought—”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s not… I don’t mean to be an asshole.” Why had it hurt so much, reliving the things he’d contorted for himself, misremembered? Julian rubbed his temple, the effect of Graves’ proximity bemusing him again, twisting things around until he wasn’t sure what he was made of anymore. Just anger, and sadness, and the feeling like he'd had no one else to love but this one capricious, wild thing, who on her best days could only love him back erratically, dosing him with a low-grade, survivable pain that was easier to bear than loneliness.

Because a moment of Sam’s attention, however impermanent, was better than a lifetime with nothing at all.

“Just… wait. Don’t go.” Graves hands were on either side of Julian’s shoulders against the door, and he was leaning towards him, the usual _you like me_ with a new little twist: _please._

“I’m not Sam,” Julian said hoarsely, and Graves’ lips brushed his, softly.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t—”

“I don’t need you to be her, Julian.”

“No, I mean I’m not Sam because you can’t play with me,” Julian said. “Don’t you fucking get it? I’m not well, Graves. I’m fucking sick.”

 _We’re in the prime of our lives, Jules!_ he thought in Lam’s voice, and instantly felt sicker. 

“I shouldn’t have come here,” Julian said, fumbling for the door handle and turning away, noting only that Graves didn’t stop him. It occurred to him that Sam must have done the same thing before, taking and regretting, and he rushed up the stairs with bile in his throat, realizing that despite everything, he’d only become the worst of her.

“Lam,” Julian said, bursting into the room. “I’m going to do i-”

He broke off, remembering that Lam wasn’t there. The room was empty, precisely as he had left it, and Julian still had no idea where Lam decided to go when he didn’t choose to be here.

“God damn it,” Julian suddenly roared, tossing Sam’s book of lyrics onto his bed. “How hard is it to just fucking stay?”

But nobody answered. Nobody ever did. His mother continued chopping vegetables for Sam’s salads. Sam continued listening to her iPod knockoff, ignoring them both. She did that, ignoring Julian just to get back at their mother, and it really wasn’t fair. She probably _had_ planned to do something to Iver. She had probably fucked Iver!! She had probably fucked him LITERALLY just to piss him off. She’d probably laughed afterwards, taunted him, ignored him, threatened him with the twitch of her hips. She was probably pissed that Iver wasn’t dead; that she was gone, but not him. And because Julian loved her even if she had not loved him, he was willing to find out why. Sickness or vengeance. Whatever it was.

“I’m doing the séance,” Julian informed the empty room, and nobody bothered to answer.

* * *

Lam did not show up to rehearsal. 

“Figures,” Cat muttered, eyeing her fingernails. She was irritable, scheduled to sing for her father’s performance class and therefore unconcerned with their ensemble rehearsal. Graves was watching Julian, saying nothing.

It was an ugly, awkward rehearsal, none of them capable of sounding anything but false and strident together. Iver, as usual, determined this to be Julian’s fault. 

“Are you capable of sounding alive?” he asked Julian.

It occurred to Julian for the first time that he did not much enjoy the constant criticism that came with their so-called education. It was worse from Iver, needling in a way that was obviously weaponized, but even when it was kind it was relentless. Constructive criticism, they said, was all about learning and improving. What exactly did they think he was going to construct?

“Just lay off him,” Cat snapped, and Iver glared at her.

“Miss Archman, I am your advisor,” he reminded her, and she flicked her ponytail angrily over her shoulder. “If you’d like to advance to your fourth year, I suggest you not interfere with my methods.”

She sat back moodily and said nothing else, snatching her things and leaving the moment their class period ended.

Julian considered going after her, but Graves was lingering, and so he over-lingered, waiting until everyone had gone and then deciding, probably absurdly, to walk up to Iver’s desk.

“What’s your problem?” Julian said, and Iver looked up, narrow-eyed.

“Excuse me?”

“You hate me. Fine. What’s your best case here? You’ll antagonize me until I quit?”

Iver sat back in his chair, folding his arms smugly over his chest. “Are you in danger of quitting, Mr. Kinney?”

What an insufferable asshole. “I can see how you might feel a certain amount of authority here,” Julian commented. “Maybe you’re even confusing it for power.” 

Iver lifted a brow.

“But that assumes you and I share the same stakes,” Julian said. 

“Are you saying you have no interest in advancing in our curriculum?” Iver asked neutrally.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

“I just want to know what you want from me,” Julian said. “Misery? Discouragement? Unspecified but pervasive suffering?”

“If that’s what you take from my class, I certainly can’t stop you,” Iver said, glancing down at the transcriptions from his first year course, and briefly, Julian fought the urge to laugh.

“This is getting old,” he muttered, and turned away, reaching the door when Iver stopped him.

“I hear you’ve gone to see Renata Stirling,” Iver commented. “Was that enlightening?”

Julian grimaced, then pivoted to face him. “Are you afraid I’ll take her side?”

“Afraid? No.” Iver set down his pen. “But whatever you think you know of me, I assure you, you do not.”

“Maybe you’re a less important part of her story than you think you are,” Julian said, though what he meant was maybe, just maybe, you’re actually not important at all.

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Iver murmured, half-smiling as he dismissed Julian with a nod.

Unbelievable.

Julian turned in irritation, heading to his next class, until accidentally he had headed to his room, and unintentionally he had withdrawn The Search from beneath Lam’s dresser and without much thought removed the car key, and suddenly he was behind the wheel and driving, driving, stopping at a stoplight, driving again, stop, drive, stop. Drive. Turn. Stop.

“Oh, hello,” said Renata, opening the door and glancing around on the porch. “Alone this time?”

“It seems that way,” Julian said.

“Mm, well, very dangerous for you,” she said. “You’re very susceptible to me.”

“I know.”

“In fairness to you, it’s nothing you can help,” she said. “Chromosomal or something.”

“Okay.”

“Come in,” she said, gesturing him into what he supposed would be her parlor. She was wearing a sweater dress with bell sleeves, cinched at the waist, tall boots. “What’s on your mind, Julian Kinney?”

“I’ve decided to do the séance,” he said.

“Oh.” Her eyes lit up. “How wonderful. Tea?”

“It’s not laced with anything, is it?”

“I do love a man with a healthy dose of paranoia,” she said admiringly, “but no, not today, I’m afraid.”

“Then yes.” He sat down and fidgeted, knee bouncing, until she returned. 

“So,” she said, placing a cup and saucer next to him on a side table alongside a small platter of cream and sugar, then setting one down for herself. “You’ve apparently got questions for m-”

“Why Iver?” fell out of his mouth.

“Oh. Boo.” She pouted, lifting her teacup. “Terrible question.”

“But—”

“Why anyone?” she asked. “It’s all nonsense, really. Meaningless hormones and such. Nothing.”

“But it clearly wasn’t nothing,” he said, impatient.

“No, it wasn’t nothing,” she angrily confirmed, slamming the cup down on her saucer. “Don’t you know not to pester a woman about her questionable life choices?”

He grunted something equally annoyed into his teacup, and she sighed.

“Men,” she said. “They think they rule the world. That falling for the wrong woman is some kind vindictive trap. And heaven forbid we go so far as to ruin a young man’s bright future." 

“What exactly does he blame you for?”

“God, what doesn’t he blame me for? He blew his final performance,” Renata said. “Said it was me, that I’d distracted him. That I drugged him.”

“Did you?”

“Of course,” Renata said. “He has severe anxiety. Stage fright.” She sipped her tea, smirking. “It was barely anything, just a drop”—she mimicked it—“of valium in his morning coffee. I did it every time he had a performance and nothing had ever been amiss.”

“Maybe he had a right to be angry,” Julian said half-heartedly.

“Angry, sure. But did you know there’s a bard registry?” she asked, sipping again. “He insisted that I be registered as dangerous and expelled from Dives, which I was.” Another sip. “The irony is that I never actually did anything to him,” she commented as if she’d just thought of it, though Julian was positive that wasn’t the case.

“Aside from valium?”

“Yes, aside from valium, we covered that,” she said irritably. “I mean I never… influenced him.” She waved a hand in reference to Julian’s previous observations of her control. “I _can_ restrain myself, you know.”

“You… never?” Julian asked doubtfully.

“Never. Actually, it was me who was tricked,” Renata said. “I thought he was sweet, almost fragile. He was ambitious, but nervous, anxious, you know?” She paused, thinking. “Of course you always think the person you fall for is going to be one thing, and then you think well maybe this is even better, because I never imagined it this way. Not that I thought I’d wind up with my own personal Jesus or anything,” she said, as Julian thought again _he doesn’t look a thing like Jesus_ , “but I thought someone like Andrew would make me feel safe, in a way. That he’d appreciate having someone like me to help him. Guide him.” She set the cup down and stared into space. “Turns out he did until he needed someone to blame.” 

“How did he know you drugged him?”

“I’m not sure he did know,” Renata admitted. “But it was believable enough. I am… not well-regarded,” she said with what Julian considered a withheld tracing of self-pity. “But I wasn’t dangerous. I’m not,” she corrected with her fingers around her cup, “dangerous. Or I wasn’t before, but now, who knows?” She laughed merrily to herself. “A scorned woman is historically very convincing grounds for a mad one,” she said, glancing at Julian, and then stopped. “You believe me, don’t you?”

She sounded incredulous, which he found surprising. “It’s not that unlikely a story. And Iver’s a cunt.”

“He certainly is,” she agreed, frowning at him, “but my god, you really… you really think I’m telling the truth, don’t you?”

“Is that so unbelievable?” Julian asked. “You could make me believe it if you wanted to, and anyway what difference would it make? I already said I’d do the favor you asked.”

“True. Very true.” She tapped her nails along the edge of the parlor’s side table. “I am sorry,” she said after a bit. “That I played with you. And for lying about chromosomes making you susceptible. It’s more likely your mother,” she said. “Sam always said she was a cunt, too.”

“Well. Certainly not a saint.” Julian took a sip of his own tea, which bloomed with cinnamon on his tongue. “But it takes lonely to know lonely.”

Renata smiled at him then, all youth and sweetness.

“We can do it here,” she said. “Tomorrow night, if you like. Bring your little friends,” she added, rising to her feet. “More bards, more magic.”

“I’ll have to read the ritual,” he said. “Or ask Lam what he’s read about it.”

“Oh, Calamity,” she joked at the mention of Lam, and then paused thoughtfully. “I do feel a bit sorry for him,” she said. “If you want to know the truth.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s hard, being the child of a genius.” She tilted her head. “There is some awareness that love has a ceiling,” she added tangentially. “Love of one’s work, one’s partner, one’s children… it all contributes to one lump sum. A person only has so much to give, but children see things for what they are before they can understand _why_ they are. Because once love has a ceiling you begin to see the limits of the room, and once you know you’re inside a room it’s a bit of a cage, isn’t it?” She smiled faintly. “Plus the Archmans’ mother was a special kind of cunt.”

“Was she?”

“So I’ve heard, though I hate to judge. After all, if I died today, what would anyone really know of me? Who I was or how I loved.” She shrugged. “Only the best of us leave behind a way to give our answers, and only the truly lucky find someone willing to shoulder that weight.”

 _For Julian_ , he thought, picturing Sam’s handwriting on her book of songs.

“Well,” he said, rising to his feet. “I should probably go, then.”

“Yes, you should,” she said. “I like you entirely too much and it’s an effort not to simply abduct you and feed you grapes.”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “The restraint.”

Her smile then was genuine and warm, and for a moment he thought maybe she was actually very lovely, and incomprehensibly sad.

“I am also sorry,” Renata said, “that in all likelihood, Sam didn’t quite know how to tell you how sorry she was.”

“Did you know if she was sick?” Julian asked, remembering that he’d forgotten to ask.

Renata blinked vacantly. “Aside from the pregnancy, you mean?”

Oh, right. She was… potentially delusional.

“Yes, aside from that,” he agreed, because one did not battle needlessly.

“No. Sam? Of course not.” She beamed at him. “It’s little Miss Stax you want to talk to about sickness,” she concluded conspiratorially, “though you didn’t hear that from me.”

Julian thought suddenly of the thing Lam had not said to Em; about how it wouldn’t fix Olympia. “The nightmares?”

“Among other things. Actually, here.” She dug into her side table, withdrawing an orange bottle. “Why don’t you give these to her, save her the trip? Tell her I told you they’re sleeping pills,” she said with an exaggerated wink.

“Of course.” He closed his fist around the bottle. “See you tomorrow, then?”

“See you then,” she agreed, humming something sweetly to herself as she returned to the kitchen, leaving him to find his own way out.

* * *

When Julian returned Professor Archman’s car, there was someone waiting for him. It was dark by then, but the flash of headlights on Cat’s gleaming hair was like a bolt of lightning; the closest thing he’d come to sun all day.

He pulled into the spot and she opened the door, sliding into the passenger seat.

“It’s my night to pick up groceries for my father,” she explained, and Julian grimaced.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t really realize other people ever used it.”

“Oh, not often. And it’s fine. I mostly just restock the pantry.” She turned to look at him, half-smiling. “I wasn’t very patient with you today.”

“I don’t expect you to be patient with me. I’m an idiot.”

“True,” she said, with a dazzle of a teasing grin, “but still, I hate to disappoint you.”

He shut the car off and tapped on the steering wheel, slouching down in the seat.

“You don’t disappoint me,” he finally said.

“In fairness, you don’t know me very well.”

“I guess not.” He glanced at her. “I don’t really think you want me to know you.”

“Ah yes, the terrifying ordeal of being seen,” she said drily. “I’m not immune.”

“It’s more than that.” Another glance. “What was Sam to you, Cat?”

“I told you. Like my sister. My other half.”

“Isn’t Lam your other half?”

“God.” She rolled her eyes. “No.”

“Why not?”

“He’s harsh, uncompromising. Angry.” She looked mildly contemptuous. “He’ll never forgive me for being loved,” she said in a low voice.

It seemed, somehow, both terribly true, and somehow unfair.

“Do you think it destroys someone?” Julian asked. “Not being loved enough.”

“Yes,” Cat said without hesitation.

They were quiet for a long time. Julian rubbed wearily at his aching temples until Cat reached over, smoothing the same spot gently with her thumb. 

“Not sleeping well?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“Poor thing.” Her thumb circled the same spot and then traveled lower, to the bone of his cheek. “You should get some rest.”

“Not sure I can,” he said. “Have to do a bit of light research before tomorrow.”

“Oh?” She sounded amused. “On what?”

“I’m doing a séance. Something to help Renata.” 

“What?” Cat sat up warily, releasing Julian’s cheek. “I assume you’re saying you plan to conjure Sam?”

“Yeah. Renata thinks she has unfinished business.”

“Well, Renata is certifiable,” Cat scoffed. 

“Isn’t she your friend?”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Well, still,” Julian said lamely.

She glanced at him, then reached out to brush his hair back from his forehead.

“I’d like to have a little of your goodness,” she said.

“You’re plenty good.”

“Am I?”

“To me, yes.”

“No.” She tutted softly. “No, if I were good to you I’d leave you alone.” Her nails were tracing patterns behind his ears, down to his jaw. “If I wanted you to be happy—”

“Happiness,” Julian said, pausing her hand with his own, “is overrated.”

She stared at him, the little crescent moon beside her eye visible beneath the streetlight, stars twinkling all the way down to her throat. She dazzled him, always, and this time he thought maybe he would not fight it. No, this time he probably would not.

She yielded immediately when he reached for her, melting into him even before he’d fully managed to close the distance. He fumbled to unbuckle his seatbelt and she reached over, lifting the lever on his seat and forcing it backwards until she fit snugly between his chest and the steering wheel, her knees locked astride his hips. The kiss this time, unlike the first time, was insatiable, unconcerned with ending, and it was jagged and raw, too; there was an urgency that made them both clumsy, her hips adjusting when his zipper dug into her bare thigh.

Her hand fit loosely around the base of his throat, his moving in opposite directions—up her spine, under her skirt, rhythmically indecent with the way they both pushed and pulled. A person should not want this badly, Julian thought. It was unhealthy, but it was alive again, that old piece of him that was fighting its way out. The piece that said insistently, this, this will be what you need, this will make it better. To touch and be touched is the closest thing you’ll ever get to love. 

His lips traveled to her neck and she made a sound in her throat that made his mind go blank. He was so consumed with her that he couldn’t identify the odd buzzing in his pocket until she’d adjusted herself and paused, digging out his phone and placing it in his hand.

“Hello?” he managed, because for whatever reason, that was the only thing his brain could think to do. A phone was ringing, make it stop.

“Julian.” 

He sat up slightly, free hand tightening around Cat’s waist while she kissed below his jaw. “Olympia? Are you okay?”

“Me? Oh god yeah, I’m… I’m fine. But listen, Lam was just here and—”

Julian fought a groan when Cat’s hand slipped below his t-shirt. “What? Where?”

“In town, but look he’s really upset—he just kind of ran off and I’m… I’m a bit worried about him, honestly—”

“In town? On foot? Wait, of course he’s on foot.” Lam didn’t typically operate machinery and more importantly, Julian was currently sitting in his fucking car. 

“I mean I think so,” Olympia said. “We were at the community center. And I’d go after him myself but honestly, Julian, I think I’d only make it worse—”

“Okay, okay.” Cat had stopped moving, probably noticing that Julian’s mind was now firmly elsewhere. “I’ll be there, Olympia, thank you.”

“Do you know how to find him?” she asked worriedly. “Where he’d go, or…?”

No, he’d never known where Lam went, but oh well. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Okay. Okay.” She sounded like she was convincing herself not to feel guilty for not doing more, which was very Olympia of her. “Okay Julian, thank you—”

“Oh wait, Olympia,” Julian said. “You need to talk to Em, okay?”

“What?”

“Just promise me you’ll go see Em. Alone,” he said. 

“Julian, that sounds—”

“Ominous, I know, but it’s not.” He thought of the pills in his pocket, the way Em watched her at Renata’s party, the things neither of them seemed able to say. “Alright, I’m gonna get going.”

“Okay, Julian. Good night.”

They hung up and Julian looked at Cat, whose brow was furrowed.

“Sorry,” he told her, leaning forward to kiss her quickly, reassuringly, though she didn’t move. “Wanna come hunt down Lam with me?”

“Not really, no.” She slithered out of his lap, resuming her position in the passenger seat. “I'll just walk into collegetown.”

“I’ll help you get groceries later, I promise—”

“I’m good. The séance,” she said. “When are you doing it?”

“Tomorrow night, at Renata’s,” he said, recognizing that she was withdrawing from him already, again. Again, already. “But Cat, wait, I really want t-”

“We really shouldn’t do… whatever this is,” she said, staring out of the dash. “And I hope you know what you’re doing with Renata.” She reached for the door, pushing it open. “I wish you could move forward,” she commented without looking at him, her breath forming puffs in the evening air. “But it’s not really me you want, Julian, it’s… her. Her life, everything she had. That’s why you feel like this. And maybe it’s true for me, too,” she said, half-laughing. “We both just want someone who isn’t really there.”

“No, Cat, that’s not—”

“Whatever answer you think you’ll get from Sam’s ghost, it won’t fix you,” she said. “It won’t heal you.”

“Cat,” he said helplessly, but she slid out of the passenger seat, pausing to look at him before she closed the door.

“In another life,” she said, “I meet you first, and everything is different.”

He didn’t think there was an argument that would work, and anyway she’d already closed the door, walking away and shivering slightly as he started the car once again.

* * *

By the time Julian got to town he was angry.

Not about Cat. Not really. 

Not about Sam, or Iver, or Renata.

In some backwards way he was furious with Lam, and he didn’t really understand why until he nearly ran over something in the middle of the street. A silhouette through the headlights, hysterically laughing, that could have belonged to no one else.

“Jesus FUCKING Christ,” Julian yelled, pulling into one of the parallel spots so inelegantly it was essentially double-parking. He jammed the hazard lights twice by accident, then a third time on purpose, and stormed out of the car, slamming the door and stomping over to where Lam still lay on his back in the street, hands over his eyes, panting.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Julian demanded, and Lam didn’t answer, or couldn’t. “Are you having a seizure?”

“No.” The sound was choked out, gasping. “Maybe. Who cares.”

“Just tell me if it’s a medical emergency so I know whether to kill you or call an ambulance!”

“Christ almighty, Jules, I’m fine,” Lam said, and pulled a hand away to wipe his nose, his cheeks visibly red and streaked with tears in the light from Julian’s flashing hazards. “I’m fine,” Lam said again, looking like a deranged clown.

“You’re not fine.” Julian paced beside him, furious. “Get out of the street.”

Lam’s response was muffled, his hands returned to his face. “No thanks. Comfy here.”

“Lam. For fuck’s sake. I’m not in the mood.”

“Okay, then go.”

“LAM,” Julian roared.

“Yes?” Lam asked.

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE STREET!”

“I’m not going to die like this,” Lam said matter-of-factly, beginning to hiccup, though his breathing had thankfully slowed. “I have it on very good authority that I do not die via any sort of vehicular misfortune.”

“That’s not a good reason to lie down in the street!” Julian growled.

“The stars look nice from down here,” Lam said nonsensically. “See?”

“God damn it,” Julian said again, and before he really understood what he was shouting about, he was already shouting. “Don’t you understand that you have a choice?” he bellowed into the night air, startling a cat. “Just because it doesn’t end here doesn’t mean you have to choose to put yourself here! You can decide to be alive, Calamity, goddamnit! FUCK,” Julian erupted cathartically, kicking at nothing. 

Lam sniffled, curling on his side, and Julian gritted his teeth, then sat beside him.

“What are you doing?” Lam muttered.

“LOOKING AT THE GODDAMN STARS,” Julian said hotly, lying down beside him and staring up.

“You might die,” Lam said. “No oracular guarantees for you.”

“Shut up,” Julian muttered. Overhead the night was unusually clear, and there was only a sliver of a moon, so the stars were, in fact, more visible than usual. “Fuck, this is nice,” Julian said angrily.

Lam rolled slowly onto his back, staring up beside Julian.

A car went by on one of the side streets. 

Neither of them moved. 

“Been playing with a verse,” Lam said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?” Julian huffed, annoyed he’d had to ask.

“Mm, something like… _I pack my case, I check my face, I look a little bit older,_ ” Lam sang. “ _I look a little bit colder. With one deep breath, and one big step, I move a little bit closer. I move a little bit closer—_ ”

“ _For reasons unknown,_ ” Julian sang miserably, closing his eyes.

Lam said nothing.

“ _I caught my stride_ ,” he sang after a moment, “ _I flew and flied—”_

He trailed off.

“ _I know if destiny’s kind, I’ve got the rest of my mind,_ ” Julian contributed bitterly.

“ _But my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to, and my eyes, they don’t see you no more_ —”

“ _And my lips, they don’t kiss, they don’t kiss the way they used to, and my eyes don’t recognize you no more—_ ”

“ _For reasons unknown_ ,” Lam sang softly.

“ _For reasons unknown_ ,” Julian agreed, the song fading out and with it, the fleeting image of Sam, who looked spectacularly bored and tapped her absence of a watch.

Get moving, Jules.

“What happened?” Julian said, turning his head to look at Lam, though he felt he already knew on some level what it was. 

“I just get the feeling I’m not who I think I am,” Lam said.

“Yeah,” Julian said. 

“Kind of depressing.”

“Well, you know I specialize in depressing,” Julian muttered, closing his eyes.

“You? No,” Lam said, sitting upright to look down at him, and in his surprise Julian mirrored him, eyes snapping open.

The anguish on Lam’s face was less inflamed now, his manic laughter gone. 

“No, Jules,” Lam said, “you’re Mr. Brightside.”

It occurred to Julian that Lam was telling him something that nobody had bothered to tell him before, or had maybe not understood before. Something Julian had possibly not really understood about himself, which was well-timed by Lam. 

And it occurred to Julian he could repay the favor. 

“Just hit pause on the malaise and come home with me, would you?” Julian said.

“Yeah, fine,” said Lam.

Julian rose to his feet and thrust out a hand for Lam's, who struck it away with obvious repulsion but stood. “What a shit parking job this is,” Lam remarked derisively, pulling open the passenger side door as Julian rolled his eyes and slid into the driver’s seat. 

“I’m doing the séance, by the way,” Julian said.

“I mean, I know,” Lam said. “Because you’re a fucking imbecile.”

“Oh please. You wouldn’t let me die,” Julian said.

“Bold flex from a man who very recently chose to lay in the middle of the street.”

Julian shrugged. “The stars looked nice.”

“You know where else they look nice? The sidewalk.”

“Okay, okay—”

“Dives Conservatory.”

“I get it, Lam—”

“Your bedroom.”

“Are you done?” Julian asked. 

Lam was quiet for a second.

“I can try to help you,” he said. “I can sometimes do… things.”

“I noticed,” Julian said, thinking of the snap of flame he’d thought he’d imagined.

“Not this sort of thing, though. That I know of.”

“Okay.”

“But maybe.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not guaranteed.”

“I don’t need a guarantee.”

“If you do have a stroke, I can’t save you.”

“Okay.”

“Although at least if you die there’s no orpheus to conjure you up again. Which is reassuring.”

“Yep.”

“I’d never have to see you again, basically.”

“True.”

“Though you could haunt me.”

“Probably will.”

“Fair. Can’t imagine you’d have anything else to do.”

“You don’t think I have other people to haunt?”

“None so delightful,” Lam said, and Julian glanced at him.

They looked at each other for a period of time Julian could only call fleetingly infinite.

Then they looked away, no further conversation necessary as the lights above them changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only song this week is "For Reasons Unknown," because I babbled on for too long and cut the chapter off earlier than I planned. We shall COMMUNE WITH GHOSTS next week!


	10. Get Back to Where You Are

Overnight word had gotten out that Renata Stirling was having another party. Julian woke that morning, groggy from poring over the collection of books Professor Archman had given him, to find that his phone contained a message from Graves. 

_I assume this is your doing?_ Graves had said, and even in text form Julian could see his face; that expression of _I hope you know what you’re doing._

Immediately, Julian stifled a groan and called Renata from the hallway. 

“Yes?”

“A party?” he prompted doubtfully, because as far as Julian was concerned, that was only bound to make things messier than necessary. “When you agreed to play host for the evening, I didn’t think you meant it quite so literally.”

“Julian, my dear,” Renata said neutrally, “did we not agree that all your little friends should be there?”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, then how convenient that someone was able to think of a plausible excuse.” She sounded smug, as she often did.

“But Renata, if you’re inviting all of Dives—”

“Power in numbers, Julian, power in numbers,” Renata chided, or possibly chanted. “Any magic is always more effective whilst amplified by the hundreds.”

Julian rubbed his temple, claustrophobic already. “You expect me to convince a hundred people to participate in some sort of mass ghost summoning?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s none of their business,” Renata sniffed. “Now if that’s all? I’m going to have to spend the day procuring recreation, Julian, so if anything I’m the one with the real headache,” she announced, and promptly hung up the phone, leaving Julian to glance back at his screen, which had returned to Graves’ text message.

_I assume this is your doing?_

Julian slipped back into his room, looked over at a softly snoring Lam, and typed back _are you coming?_

 _do you need me?_ Graves replied. A very controversial set of words in Julian’s opinion. He took a few seconds to ponder an appropriate answer. 

_she’s sharpest for me when you’re around_ , Julian replied, which was true. Whatever Graves’ abilities were in a technical sense, the overall effect was to suffer the clarity of Julian’s own memory. And there was little for Julian that had ever existed to experience from memory aside from Sam.

 _then I’ll be there_ , Graves replied, and Lam stirred, opening his eyes from where he’d curled around two open books. 

Julian put his phone away quickly as Lam scrutinized the room, regaining his bearings. 

“I think,” Lam said, making a face as his voice emerged thickly from his probably dry mouth, “we may need more people.” He stifled a yawn into the back of his hand, shifting to sit upright. It was all very familiar by then, Lam and his prominent ribs and his tousled hair, but for whatever reason Julian felt strongly aware that what Lam actually needed was breakfast and probably a shower. 

“Renata’s sorted it,” Julian said. “She’s throwing a party.”

“Oh. Figures.” Lam pawed at his eyes. 

“Hungry?” Julian asked.

“Ravenous.”

“Dining hall?”

“If you insist.”

“Or we could get bagels?”

“If you want.”

“Better coffee that way.”

“I imagine so.”

“So is that what you want?”

“I told you, if you want t-”

“But what do _you_ want?” Julian asked, frustrated or possibly pained. He wasn’t sure at this point whether he could tell the difference.

Lam looked at him for a moment, brows knitting with what seemed to be an equally bewildered set of emotions.

“What the fuck are you doing?” asked Lam with yet another dose of suspicion.

“Trying to have breakfast!” Julian snapped, abruptly incensed. Or possibly panicked.

“Jules, to my knowledge you manage to eat breakfast every day without my help,” said Lam.

“Yes,” Julian irritably sighed, “but—”

“But what?”

“But it’s… just answer the question, for fuck’s sake, Lam—”

“You’re upset.” Lam smirked at him.

“I’m talking to you, so yes of course I’m upset,” Julian growled, to which Lam shrugged. “I’m just trying to do something _nice_ —”

“Are you?” Lam echoed.

“Of course I am!”

“Are you sure?”

Of course not, ha ha ha, thought Julian morosely. “Just pick somewhere, Calamity.”

“Or what?”

“What do you mean ‘or what’?”

“You said pick somewhere. There was an implied consequence.”

“Pick somewhere _or we’ll be late to class_ , you idiot—”

“Why? We’ve established that you’re perfectly capable of breaking your fast without me.”

“Lam.” Julian practically snarled it. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be difficult.”

“You also don’t have to do this,” Lam agreed with a broad gesture in Julian’s direction, “and yet here you are, aren’t you?”

This was hopeless. “I’m just trying t-”

“To what?”

“To…” 

Unhelpfully, Julian stammered. It was one of those horrifying moments in any argument wherein the other person posed a perfectly unreasonable question that should have a simple, uncomplicated answer, but for whatever reason, the truth could not come out except in fractured half-sentences and flashes of rage-infused white. It was, Julian realized, the very knife to the throat of any rhetorical strategy: emotion. Eventually every argument came down to the bare stakes of the matter, which in this case were embarrassing, vulnerable, intimate. Can you not see that I’m right, that what I’m doing is reasonable and good? But of course Lam could not see that, because Lam was Difficult with a capital D, which was why he was alone. A type of alone that Julian could recognize and understand, but certainly could not express aloud in any coherent manner. 

“Lam, I’m just trying to—”

“To take care of me?” Lam answered for him. Absurdly, he sounded even more suspicious. As if this were not perfectly befuddling to Julian, more so than anyone else. As if maybe Julian had been plotting this somehow, lying in wait for his opportunity to assert his superiority over Lam. Meanwhile, Lam looked angry, or possibly even scared. And worst of all he looked regretful, as if he suddenly wished he had never allowed Julian to see as much as he had.

“It’s just breakfast,” said Julian tiredly, who knew it was not. 

“You really shouldn’t go to class today,” Lam said. “You’ll have to write a song for the séance.”

Julian groaned. “Just because _you’re_ a delinquent—”

“I’ll stay if you want,” Lam said. “If you need help.”

Briefly, Julian’s jaw clenched. “So you’ll happily offer to help me write, but you’ll come for me with knives over the merest suggestion of bagels?”

“That’s different and you know it, Jules,” Lam said, purposefully staring at an open page in his book, which was such ridiculous pretense that Julian wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. “You think I need someone to look after me.”

“You absolutely do,” Julian retorted. “And for the record, I never wanted it to be me!”

“But you made it you,” Lam noted, flipping the page.

“You helped me first!”

“So this is some sort of socially contracted tit-for-tat? A gentlemen’s agreement?”

“Would that make you happy, Lam?” Julian said sarcastically, and Lam looked up.

“That,” Lam said. “That right there is the problem.”

“What is?”

“Did she tell you?”

Unbelievable. Why did he put himself through this? He could have had ten omelettes by now. Twenty, even. “Did who tell me what?” Julian demanded, wondering if there was any point “reasoning” with Lam and then determining no, there wasn’t, but clearly he was still doing it, and why, _why_ had this ever become a thing that he did? Not pity, surely. Certainly not pity alone. Julian had felt sorry for plenty of people in his life and still carried on with the act of solitary breakfast. He liked Lam well enough for a person who was alternately kind and awful, with seemingly no spectrum in between. Yes, he did, he liked Lam, even though Lam was the sort of person who had to be told to do things a normal person would just do, because Lam was also the sort of person who did not need to be told to do things a normal person would generally fail to do.

Lam was not a normal person, but he treated Julian like one, and for that Julian was grateful. And furious. And many millions of things in between.

“Never mind,” muttered Lam in the sanctimonious voice of a child’s tantrum, and Julian rose sharply to his feet, startling them both. He had no concept what his intention was, only that it had shot through his spine like a bolt of lightning, this idea that he could not just continue to sit here. He couldn’t just sit here and be with his thoughts like this, certainly not with Lam sitting there with his carefully constructed sense of distance. He could understand Lam not wanting pity but this was not pity, it was breakfast! People had to eat, goddamnit! This was not unique to Julian!

“We’re getting bagels,” Julian announced, his voice several decibels louder than it needed to be.

“If it makes you happy, Jules,” Lam replied tonelessly, and by then, Julian was sure he had a headache.

“What,” he seethed, “does my happiness have to do with it?” Because clearly if you cared about my happiness at all, Julian did not add, we wouldn’t be here, now would we? 

“You see? That’s exactly my point,” said Lam.

It occurred to Julian that 1) he was losing his mind and should have simply left long ago, but also 2) did not his actions conceivably suggest that he would rather be here, having this argument, than any of the other places he might have otherwise been? Although that particular quandary did not seem worth considering for long. Ten-to-one odds the answer would only disappoint them both. 

“Lam,” Julian said in a tone of defeat.

“Yes, Jules?”

“Put your shoes on. We’re going.”

“You put your shoes on,” scoffed Lam.

“I’m—” Julian blinked, realizing Lam had indeed already donned his footwear and it was Julian alone who remained shirtless and unkempt. “I hate you,” he said with what he felt to be capital ambivalence.

“If only,” Lam tossed over his shoulder, already heading for the door. “Come along, Jules, we’ll be late for class,” he added with mock disapproval, striding into the hall as Julian once again reached for a shirt that did not turn out to be his, earning himself a walk full of ridicule along the way.

* * *

Lam was right that Julian shouldn’t have gone to class, although Julian did not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. In any case it was a busy day with almost no time to drift melancholically into fitful daydreams about Sam for purposes of songwriting, although it did provide an unusual plot twist wherein Professor Archman magically remembered Julian’s existence.

“My daughter tells me you plan to summon your late sister from beyond the grave,” Archman commented, holding Julian back after class. Julian had caught Cat’s eye earlier, or tried to, though she seemed to be avoiding him. 

“Oh, well—” Julian began, and was promptly cut off.

“I must warn you it will be very dangerous, and likely unsatisfying,” Archman said. “Though I appreciate your efforts to host it off campus. Liability, you know,” he commented absently, and Julian nodded, as if he’d already been legally advised that ghosts were not accounted for in the Dives insurance policy. “If you do die,” Archman added, startling Julian a bit, “I think it’s worth pointing out that you’ve exceeded my expectations this term.”

“I’m… sorry, what?” said Julian.

“Well, initially I thought very little of you, I’ll admit. I did assume this would be the best place for you, given your abilities,” Archman said. “But of course I never genuinely expected you to find any sort of success here. I find I’m very much looking forward to your solo performance next week,” he added.

“Assuming I live?” Julian suggested drily.

“Yes, assuming you live,” Archman confirmed. “If you die you are of course exempt from any taxing mundanities such as grading.”

“So you think I’m doing… well?” Julian echoed, processing this unlikely conclusion only once he’d gotten past the initial observation that his professor was sending him amiably off to his impending demise. 

“Oh, like a fish,” said Archman. “Your sister was of course much more exceptional—”

“Of course,” Julian said.

“—but you’re not without capability. Perhaps more sentiment than I’d like,” Archman acknowledged, “with more catharsis than training, but there is an element there of a sort of… encompassing faith. In people, in the world. Eventually of course you’ll have it stomped out of you in some horrible way,” he added neutrally, “but assuming it’s not purely naiveté—”

“I’m not naive,” Julian said, perhaps too defensively. “I’ve seen the world. I know how ugly it can be.” How twisted, how angry, how full of rot.

“And yet here you are,” replied Archman, as if that were sufficient proof of something, or indeed anything. “You may have a very bright future here,” he added, which was the first time Julian had heard that in his term so far at Dives. “Though that is of course entirely up to you.”

“Are you just trying to convince me not to do the séance?” asked Julian, who was a touch confused as to the purpose of this chat.

“Hm? Oh no, for academic purposes I very much look forward to the outcome,” Archman said. “Just don’t let Thurston catch wind of it. And no, what I mean is you’ll have to choose your own path,” he clarified. “Success is not any single choice or opportunity. It is many choices, and also the ability to know which opportunities are yours. It is the choice you must make each morning to live a difficult life, one striving to fulfill your passions. It is choosing, many times over, to pay the price you must inevitably pay for the chance to do what you want to do.” He shuffled some papers on his desk, growing temporarily distracted by a loose pen.

“And you think I lack that dedication?” Julian asked guardedly, to which Archman looked up.

“I do not think anything about what you have or lack,” Archman said, blinking. “I merely think it worth informing you that what brought you here cannot possibly be the thing that moves you forward. It will not be enough.”

“Oh,” said Julian, which seemed to be sufficient enough for Archman.

“Best of luck,” he said, and then he retreated back into his office. 

It was raining when Julian ventured outside, which it had not been earlier but now firmly was, almost vengefully, like the clouds themselves took issue with the landscape and felt the need to blanket the campus in wet. Julian did not own a proper raincoat or proper shoes and was very much wearing jeans that quickly became soggy, so naturally it struck him that he was in part a victim of the aforementioned vengeance. What had he possibly done to the sky? He peered up to let fat, pelting droplets swim in waves down his face and clothes, idly spitting the ones that slid between his lips.

He didn’t really want to die, if that was in question at all. By Archman, or by Lam, or by anyone. Presumably since Julian was being told so frequently that death was a plausible outcome this might make him seem suicidal, but he wasn’t. Instead it was, as Archman had said, faith. Julian believed that Sam would want him to give her the opportunity to have the last word, and while he didn’t necessarily believe that she knew or expected him to put his life on the line for the opportunity to do so, he also felt sure in some distant, possibly false way that if all he had left of her was her willpower, that was enough to keep his own heart beating. 

Since the moment Sam had passed from this world, Julian had been the one with the strange, unlikely gift, so it was true, in a way, what he believed of her. That Sam was so full of life that even now—even knowing she might have chosen death herself—Julian didn’t question that his abilities were hers to use, and that they existed in him for a reason.

“Trying to drown?” he heard from behind him, and then an umbrella came up over his head. Julian turned to find Graves there and felt, briefly, a wave of something.

“You tried to drown,” Julian remarked.

Graves said nothing.

“It must be painful,” Julian added. “Carrying around everyone else’s burdens. Choosing to be selfish must be a kind of relief.”

“So you think I’m selfish,” Graves murmured, which wasn’t a question.

“Aren’t you?” Julian asked, turning towards him. “I think you’ll spend forever looking for something you’ll never get at the expense of everything you already have.” 

Graves scraped a hand around his mouth, mirthlessly laughing to himself. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“This is quite a unique way to tell me I’m a terrible lay.”

“You aren’t.”

“But you regret being with me?”

“Not at all.”

“But you wouldn’t do it again.”

“No.”

“Because of what, Cat? Lam? They were the reasons Sam gave me, too.” Graves stared out over the knoll, watching the lights flicker on from inside the dorm windows. 

“Graves Nero, if I wanted to spend my whole life sexually satisfied and completely alone, I’d be with you in a heartbeat. But someday you’ll need to leave all this behind you, and I’m not really sure you know how.” 

Julian slid a hand down, thumb resting along the inside of Graves’ wrist, where his pulse listlessly ticked on. It wasn’t a nice thing to say, but at least it was honest. And he had a feeling Graves knew what he meant regardless.

“Thanks,” said Graves, and Julian released him.

“You’re still coming tonight?”

“Of course.” Graves considered the view, commenting, “You can still come over anytime, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, if I’m being honest, you wouldn’t really be using me any more than I’d be using you.”

“Good to know,” Julian said, and meant it. 

Overhead there was a clap of lightning, a rumble of thunder, and Graves shrugged, nodding towards the dorms. “Going in?”

“Just another minute,” Julian said, and Graves nodded again, one hand tucked in his pocket as he left Julian standing in the rain.

It felt, in some obscure way, like a day for irreversible change. Julian doubted he would see things this way again—with that same question mark, the whirlwind of his arrival. The hope of mystery, the optimism of unanswered questions. He wanted to see the campus one last time with his own eyes, however eager they happened to be. He wanted to feel something, however possibly naive, before it became changed, altered by the abysmal clarity of truth.

Plus, he might die.

A half-smile tugged at Julian’s mouth at the idea of it, or more accurately, the knowledge that he really didn’t want that. He shook himself and looked up at the sky, squinting, then took off at a sprint to the dorm for warm clothes, dry socks. Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted after this—after Dives and after Sam—but he knew something. He didn’t want to drown. 

And maybe that was the part of him he’d forgotten was his all along.

* * *

There was a knock at their door as Julian was just finishing the lyrics to the song he’d be performing to summon Sam. Lam opened the door, and then immediately shut it.

“Graves?” asked Julian without looking up.

“Yep,” said Lam. 

“I can drive,” said Graves through the door. “Olympia’s here too.”

“Erm, Julian?” called Olympia through the door, and Lam rolled his eyes, but grudgingly pulled it open. “Oh, hi,” she said with surprise, a flush reaching her cheeks as they registered that Em was standing silently beside her. “I just wanted to say…”

She trailed off with a glance at Lam, and then back to Julian.

“Well, I can’t say it’s not completely unsafe and reckless,” she said carefully.

“But you’re not going to stop me?” Julian guessed, checking that the ink was dry before he closed the book on the last of his notes.

“No,” Olympia said with a profound weariness, exchanging a brief glance with Em. “Reid and Skit are coming, too. They’re just running late, obviously,” she said with a shrug. 

“And Cat?” Julian asked, looking at Graves, who shook his head.

“She thinks it’s a bad idea,” he said.

“We all think it’s a bad idea,” Lam muttered, to which Em snorted their agreement. “But we’re still going to be there, aren’t we?”

“Maybe not everyone wants to actually _see_ Julian suffer, okay?” Graves shot back.

“Right. There’s that philanthropy you’re so famous for, Nero,” Lam drawled in reply, at which point Julian felt it would be necessary to intervene. 

“I’ll take Lam,” he said before Graves could open his mouth again. “That way you can take the others. See you there?”

Graves nodded, attention flicking from Lam to Julian and back again. “Sounds good. See you there.” He beckoned to Olympia and Em, who both went with him down the stairs. 

“Grab Proust,” Julian said to Lam, whose mouth flickered with something unsaid. “What?”

“You keep picking me,” Lam managed after a moment.

“Is that a problem?” asked Julian impatiently. “Better I just drive you there myself than subject everyone else to you and Graves bickering for an entire car ride.” He grabbed one of the books, then another, then pondered if he should bring a third.

“You could have gone with them,” Lam said.

“And left you here? I need you,” Julian said distractedly, trying to remember if these were the two books that had instructions, or what you could reasonably call instructions. In reality they were more like meditation exercises. “Do you think I need the Moravetz?”

“Julian.”

“Hm?” He looked up to find Lam watching him.

“You already know what you need to know,” Lam said. “You conjure her all the time.”

“Right, but just in case—”

“Julian.” Lam’s hand shot out for his shoulder. “I won’t let you fuck this up. Okay? I won’t.”

“I know,” slipped out from Julian’s mouth before he fully pieced it together: Lam’s hand on his shoulder and the insistence of his eyes on Julian’s. There was more here, Julian realized, than what Lam was saying, although it seemed to be more than either of them were ready to articulate, and more to what he was saying in return. 

“Let’s just go,” Julian said quickly, grabbing the keys and making his way outside. He wound up sprinting through the drizzling rain to the car, pulse fumbling up to his throat. Lam, running beside him, shook off in silence when they’d both secured themselves in their respective seats. Julian turned the key in the ignition, handing Lam the song he’d written.

“Make changes if you want,” he said, and Lam bent his head to look.

Then he looked up, and out the window.

Then he looked back down.

Julian pulled up to a red light.

Lam looked up and to the left.

Julian hit the gas again, and Lam opened his mouth.

“If,” Lam began, and stopped. 

“Use your words,” advised Julian.

“Shut up. If it turns out it was me,” Lam muttered, “just… let me go, okay?”

“What?” Julian glanced at him, then back at the road.

“If it turns out I did this to her, or that it’s my fault somehow, or…” Lam trailed off, staring out his window. “Don’t try to pretend everything’s okay or… I don’t know. Just don’t… don’t lie to me.”

“Lam—”

“I can be out tonight,” Lam said, clearing his throat. “If we find out that… yeah. Just give me like an hour and I’ll get everything out of your way. Unless you want to press charges or something,” he said on second thought, “in which case yeah, that’s fair—”

“Lam.”

“I’m so tired.” Lam sat back and looked up at the car’s ceiling, the motion of his swallow glowing red from a passing streetlight. “I’m so fucking sick of running it in my head. Whatever the outcome, whatever it means for me, I’d like to know for sure.”

Julian tapped the steering wheel with one hand, wondering what to say.

In lieu of anything useful, he reached over, brushing Lam’s fingers with his own.

Lam jumped in his seat, flinching at the unexpected contact, but Julian didn’t move. He slid his left hand up to the top of the steering wheel, leaving his right hand on Lam’s seat where it rested beside the center console.

Slowly, Lam relaxed, returning his thigh to the position it had been before, so that Julian’s fingers brushed the side of his jeans. Then his fingers twitched, and he shifted his left hand over an inch, so that his pinky touched the side of Julian’s.

They stayed like that until Julian reached Renata’s block, which was so full of cars they were forced to circle it twice. He finally found a tricky spot, wedged in and nearly a block away, and turned the car off so they sat in silence. 

“I just wanted to feel what my sister felt,” Julian said after a moment.

Lam cleared his throat, nodding. “Figures,” he said, adding an irreverently Lam-esque tone, “Though she wasn’t much for sentimentality. Hand-holding would not have been her move,” he said in a bitter voice, like maybe he wanted to take back the earlier indiscretion.

Julin turned to look at him. “No, I meant—that’s why I came here.”

“And?” Lam said without looking.

“And sometimes I do think I feel… traces of her. Ghosts of what she felt about all of you,” Julian said. “And other times I feel… something else. Something—” A swallow. “Something more mine.”

Lam barked a laugh. “You’re sad and horny, Jules. Don’t worry, it’s just chemical.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Lam, I’m trying to tell you—”

But Lam abruptly shoved open the door and started walking, leaving Julian to chase after him down the sidewalk.

“Lam, what the fuck?”

“You think you’re dying, Julian,” Lam said without slowing. “You’re just saying things.”

“Technically you haven’t let me say anything, Lam—”

“The song is good,” Lam said, folding his arms over his chest. It was cold out, and Lam had worn a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, no coat. “It’s good. It’ll work. Okay? That’s all we need to talk about right now.”

“Lam, can you stop sprinting away? Jesus—”

“We don’t have to do this,” Lam said, rounding on Julian as they reached the edge of Renata’s expansive front lawn. “We don’t, okay? You’re always half in love with whatever’s in front of you. Nero,” he ranted, “my sister—”

“What do you think is happening right now?” Julian asked Lam, frustrated. “I’m just trying to tell you that this, what you are to me, it has nothing to do with whatever you were to her. It’s… it’s just completely fucking unrelated, Calamity—”

“What’s going on?” asked a voice, and Julian and Lam both froze, turning to find Cat standing there.

The rain had stopped, though the slickness on the pavement from a full day’s pour created a silken glow, refracting Julian’s view of her so that she seemed to split off in two directions, ethereal and surreal. She was wearing a short black dress, tall boots, her hair loose and swung over one shoulder, and for a moment Julian was blinded the way he was always blinded; dazzled by the gleam of everything she was.

Only, for the first time, he seemed faintly aware that it was precisely that: dazzlement. Like pressing down on his eyes and seeing stars popping up from the dark. Like something he’d never have, not really, because she was a glint out of the side of his eye, a bolt of lightning from his periphery. She was, and would always be, unreachable for him. And perhaps he wanted her that way—half-imagined, like Sam.

Maybe this whole time, she really was like Sam.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Julian managed to say, realizing he was barely a step away from Lam. He could reach out and shove him, touch his cheek. From inside Renata’s house came the sounds of voices shouting, thudding bass, but out here it was perfectly silent, cold air carrying nothing but the implications of things unsaid.

Lam turned to enter the house without waiting for Julian. Cat pursed her lips after him as he went, then shrugged.

“I wasn’t going to,” she admitted, “but then I changed my mind.”

She took a couple of steps towards Julian, her heels clicking as she walked.

“I still think it’s a bad idea,” she informed him.

“Are you worried about me?”

“Yes.” Her dark eyes met his with a rare form of sincerity. “And I also think your memory of Sam might be tainted by whatever it is she might still feel the need to say.”

“Yeah?”

“I worry sometimes,” Cat murmured, “that you forget the reality of her. When I say she was like my sister, I mean it, for better or worse. She was a mirror of everything I am. Everything.”

She cut him a hard, sudden glance, almost a glare.

“Well, shall we?” she said, gesturing inside. “Unless you’d like to change your mind. Run away with me.” Her mouth quirked into half a smile. “Wouldn’t that be nice? We could write songs on the road. Be together. Just belong to each other, you know?”

“You would never belong to me,” Julian said, and Cat’s smile broadened as if she knew it. As if maybe she’d always known it, and this was them mutually finding the means to close the door.

“Well,” she said, tucking her arm into his, “since you’ve decided to be so sensible about it. Let’s go summon a ghost.”

* * *

Julian had to hand it to Renata; she knew how to host everything, séances included. The house was covered in flickering candles, half-melted votives and long tapered ones in holders that sat above the fire in the hearth, and the windows were draped in heavy velvet tapestries, woozily darkening the place like a womb or a catacomb. She’d given her guests colored goblets, plastic that blinked like jewels in the flickering candle flames, and all the furniture had been pushed aside to make room at the center where people milled about, drinking and swaying with the early stages of jubilant intoxication. There were mirrors everywhere, reflecting themselves and the light from various angles. Renata herself was wearing a dress of lace and velvet, impressively short, with embroidered tights and high Victorian heels. Her hair was slicked back into a tiny wisp of a ponytail, her lips dark and her cheeks bright with eagerness and warmth.

“Finally,” she breathed when she saw him, taking his hand and pulling him towards the hearth without so much as a blink at Cat. “Are you ready?”

“Oh, um,” said Julian, glancing around the room. Lam was leaning against the wall in the corner, disappearing into a shadow. Graves was sitting on the arm of an old parlor sofa with Olympia and Reid, looking up at Cat’s entry. Em had materialized with two drinks in their hands, Skit manifesting on their left. Cat, meanwhile, had paused near the door, still hesitating as if she might prefer to run, and everyone else in the room was staring at Julian like he had an enormous zit on the center of his nose. 

“Right now?” Julian managed. 

“No time like the present,” Renata trilled, and took his face in both hands, kissing him soundly, something more revelry than affection. She tasted like apricots and black licorice, and then between his parted lips she slipped something paper-thin, which dissolved instantly on his unsuspecting tongue. He gulped and nodded, dazed, as she barked for a few other people to give her space. “We’re _singing_ ,” she told them in her spoiled princess voice, fanning the crowd away, and then stared expectantly at Julian, who blinked. 

“Well? Sing,” Renata told him impatiently, and Julian shook himself. He’d thought there might be more of a prelude to the evening’s main event, but now that he thought of it, what on earth for? And whatever she’d dosed him with was probably for the best. Better he not ask questions.

“Oh. Um.” His palms were sweating, probably from the candles and the flames in the hearth. Suddenly he felt drenched in it, his own inadequacy and nerves. “It’s, well, here,” he said, opening his page of lyrics and fumbling, nearly dropping it before offering it out to her.

“You start and we’ll pick it up,” Renata instructed, whirling around to sit on the edge of a displaced parlor side table. She crossed one long leg over the other, staring at him. Expectantly.

“Right.” Julian exhaled, suddenly itchy. “Right, one second—”

“GET ON WITH IT,” yelled a voice from the back of the room, which rapidly became a mob-like chorus.

“Right,” Julian mumbled to himself, “right—”

He looked up to find Lam watching him, expression unchanged. Jesus fuck, thought Julian, I hope you meant it when you said it was good. Then he inhaled sharply.

The only difference between his normal orpheus performance and a full summoning was the focusing of his energy. He was supposed to imagine himself not as _he_ was, but as Sam was, wherever she was. He was supposed to imagine being one with her, waiting in a bowl of light, as if he were weightless. The opening of his mind would be sufficient, according to one of the orpheus books. The connection between him and Sam was already there, stronger each time he sang. All he would have to do is find the tether between them, pull it taut, and say yes.

He closed his eyes and there was something that blanketed the room; a low hush. He tried to imagine the whirl of Sam’s blue dress; the sensation of walking into bright, white light. For a moment all he could see was Cat behind his eyes, the silvery gleam of her, but he heard the sound of movement and knew with certainty that Lam was there, within reach.

“ _I tried going against my own soul’s warning_ ,” Julian sang hoarsely. “ _But in the end, something just didn’t feel right. Oh, I tried diving even though the sky was storming… I just wanted to get back to where you are_.”

He cracked one eye to find that Renata was swaying with her eyes closed, the skirt of her dress fanning like a bell over the table. Graves had stood and the others were crowding around him, thankfully taking up the inner circle while the other occupants in the room—some recognizable, some not—began to knit themselves inwards, closing off the hum of vibration in Julian’s chest from the distinguishable coldness of the outside world. 

He knew it was Lam’s hand on his shoulder when the music changed, shifted. It became less an ambient echo of empty sound, vacant and cathedral, and formed itself into a melody, a driving delicacy of motion that quickly became a shout.

It pulsed in him, throbbed. “ _If you could see through the banner of the sun into eternity’s eyes like a vision reaching down to you, would you turn away? What if it knew you by your name? What kind of words would cut through the clutter of the whirlwind of these days?_ ”

“Samara, baby!” Renata’s voice rang out, delighted, though Julian forced his eyes to remain shut.

“ _I tried going against my own soul’s warning, and in the end, something just didn’t feel right_ —”

He could hear that Graves, Olympia, and Lam had joined him. “ _Oh I tried diving, even though the sky was storming, thunderheads were forming—_ ”

“ _But man I thought I could fly_ ,” Julian shout-sang like a release, feeling a tug to his chest that he knew was her. 

It was Sam.

“ _And when I hit the ground_ ,” he sang to her with his eyes closed, pleading, “ _it made a messed up sound, and it kept on rattling through my days, and cutting up my nights like a goddamned knife. And it got me thinking no matter how far, that I just wanted to get back to where you are_.”

It’s safe here, he thought. Whatever it is, I love you.

Whatever it is, I forgive you.

“ _Oh, I tried running from the memory and the mourning, but the penalty kept on pouring, and now I think I know why—_ ”

“ _Cause when I hit the ground, it made a messed up sound and it kept on rattling through my days, and cutting up my nights—_ ”

“ _Like a goddamn knife_ ,” Julian heard Cat sing softly, and felt a lurch then, powerful. Like Sam was dragging herself up out of the dark. Like he was the tide, somehow, guiding her back to shore.

“ _And it got me thinking no matter how far, I just wanted to get back to where you are—_ ”

“Take my body, Sam!” Renata shouted, with the vehemence of something very close to lust, and in his surprise at the sudden interruption, Julian opened his eyes. 

He saw, breathlessly, the translucent form of his sister peering around the room, turning to him.

“Hi,” he said, gasping it.

She tilted her head, mouth opening as if she might speak, and then she pivoted, slowly, to Graves, to Lam, to Olympia. To Em, to Skit, to Reid.

To Cat.

The tether in Julian’s chest gave a little bit of a start, like a whip cracking, pulling and twisting. It felt, for lack of any comparable sensation, like someone was slowly wrenching his ribs apart, twisting them to force them aside like wrought-iron gates—no, no, it was like someone had planted a seed inside him and it had grown bigger and bigger until the roots were forcing their way out, and he let out a yell that might have been vomit, because something expelled from his body, flinging itself out through his mouth.

He doubled over in pain, collapsing to his knees, and from what seemed a great distance Renata shrieked with pleasure, hysterical with satisfaction. Julian, swollen and sick, lifted his head from the ground, preparing himself to see her.

Instead, Cat stood alone in the center of a circle, unmissable in the heart of the tumorous room. She eyed her fingers and hands, her nails, running her hands over her waist and then through her platinum hair, dark eyes falling slowly to Julian’s.

“Hi Jules,” she said. “Took you long enough.”

Something was wrong. No, right. Something had gone very right and it looked deeply wrong.

“Sam,” Julian croaked, suddenly drained of much else in his capacity to say or do, but she was no longer listening.

Sam in Cat’s body moved differently, as if she were still training each individual muscle and bone to listen and bend as she wished it. She moved slowly, with cumbersome effort, and then turned to Lam.

“Calamity,” she said, and Lam, who had been crouched on Julian’s left, stood slowly. “Apologies in advance for this,” Sam-in-Cat said wistfully, leaning forward to kiss the side of his mouth, or so it appeared. “I just needed to try it for myself,” she murmured, and then pulled away, still cupping his cheek in one hand.

“Sam,” Renata said, forcing through the silent, gaping crowd—which, Julian remembered, had not been aware they were performing any sort of magic, so admittedly this must have been a shock. “Darling, it’s been positively _ages_ —”

But she fell short when Sam stepped away from Lam, his face blank and his eyes unfocused. There was an absence to him the way there had never been before, perhaps because Lam was always so very Lam even when he was doing nothing. He was so still that Julian wondered if he were even breathing.

Just then there was a slam of the front door, the sound of heavy footsteps.

“Renata,” came Iver’s voice, “have you completely lost your—”

Sam-as-Cat's hand shot out, the other lifting to cover the vast majority of her face. At first Julian thought she was frightened, but immediately he could see it was something else. It was triumphant and ecstatic, the excitement of picking a lock or stealing a pack of gum. Proof of something, proof of concept, which made Julian’s head grow light and airy while the rest of the room convulsed into screams.

Whatever happened next, Julian didn’t see it. Instead the room swam before him and blinked out, leaving him awash in darkness.

* * *

Samara Kinney and Catastrophe Archman were born on different days of the year in very different places to completely different families. From the outside, they shared almost nothing in common. Sam, for example, was born in Las Vegas to an absent father and a mother who was a dancer that was really more of a stripper and sometimes more than that, too, whereas Cat was born to a university professor and his wife. A respectable birth by any stretch of the imagination, although Cat’s father, the preeminent Manhattanite composer Edward Archman, had been in some sense caged by Cat’s mother Stella, the very lovely and very bored daughter of the then-Chairman of the Board of Dives Conservatory. Edward had been asked to join them for the fall term as a guest lecturer on composition. Ultimately he would never leave.

This was because of Stella, of course. She was a type of siren who could be better described as a succubus, and though her prominent family had gone to great lengths to keep her misdeeds a secret, she did have a recreational habit of bleeding her lovers dry. With Edward things were different, because he was a powerful bard himself and could produce music sweet enough to prevent her from draining him fully, which was exciting for her for a time. Edward had also produced some very good research about harmonic motion as applied to bards, a useful tool for maintaining whatever Stella left him of his sanity, so at first there had been a sort of courtship between them; something like that between nurse and patient. Stella decided she would marry him and probably have children with him and yes, things would be very boring, but at least she would not be under someone’s thumb—for example, her father’s. Eventually, though, she realized that she actually hated her husband very much, though it would ultimately matter very little. She would die soon after giving birth.

Which brings us back to Catastrophe, who was named quite spitefully by her mother in the moments before her death. Perhaps you’ve heard the old wives’ tale that female infants steal their mother’s beauty from within the womb? Unscientific, but there it is: women carrying girls will supposedly suffer poor skin and limp hair, and succubi carrying magical babies will have their powers robbed in quite a similar way. Stella laughed viciously when she discovered this, that her very own daughter had stolen her power from her body, only she was relieved at least that Edward would have to suffer the consequences of her mistake. By then Stella had become very irritated with the vast majority of his living habits (Edward Archman mindlessly chewing a handful of almonds was enough to make anyone wish him dead) and did not intend to save him any degree of distress.

As for Calamity, there was no telling what would happen given the time he’d spent sharing nutrients with the little probably-a-demon who was his twin, hence his name that was really more of a warning. But this is not about Calamity, is it? Because this is about Cat and Sam, Sam and Cat, twin destinies in a way. By the time Edward Archman was beginning to discover that his daughter was much the same kind of monster as his wife, Destiny Kinney had already pursued and successfully won over Frank Kinney, and of course we all know this resulted in Julian Kinney, who is also not important to the story at this time. 

Where Sam was a rebellious child, keen-eyed and sharp, Cat was not. Cat wanted nothing more than the adoration of her father, whom she considered an eccentric genius (the best kind of adult person), and although he told her it was very unlikely he could ever allow himself to get close to her as a result of the fact that she was at least 50% demonic (just genetically speaking it was a fact), Cat felt it very important to prove otherwise. (Understandable but ultimately futile.) Around the same time that Sam was learning how easily she could charm and delight an audience, Cat was striving with great difficulty to be something she thought of as normal. Because there were so few normal people around her—only bards and her father and her antisocial twin—it would take her a great deal of time to figure out how to properly imitate an ordinariness that Sam would never have to be. 

Sam, Sam, Sam. How to describe her? In terms of self-portrait Sam felt herself to be perpetually on the precipice of greatness, though she resented her small pond. No, she resented her mother. No, she resented her future. Increasingly she would have glimpses of what other people would have, careers and happy families and the like, whereas her own road seemed so obviously dismal. Destiny wanted a better life for Sam, but “better” had quite the range. Ask Destiny what Sam’s future was and she might have said Miss America or something, perhaps an eventual career as a local philanthropist, traveling around to give motivational speeches to other young girls who would never have Sam’s looks or her voice. Destiny probably imagined Sam would marry a bland Caucasian businessman like her father had been, and how could that not be the height of Destiny’s imagination? When Destiny herself could not even get that far.

Sam felt chained to her mother, to her life. Even her fondness for her brother Julian, which was more real than most of her feelings about people or things, felt tethering in a way. How could she ever leave him behind? Their mother had stripped them both of a proper education, thinking what little she understood about the world was sufficient for any child, and for god’s sake Julian was barely even socialized. He had this look to him, he watched people too closely, it gave people the heebie-jeebies and made their hair stand on end. Sam was his protector, and for most of her adolescence, that would almost be enough. She could get by on the thrill of a new high, a new seduction or a new rebellion, some new indecency to make her feel some fair suspicion that she might actually be alive. She had these moods sometimes, dark ones, and she knew her temper flashed and quickly doused. She was like Destiny, who was cruel at times, controlling and demanding, sharp with terrible words and then immediately sweet, remorseful, gentle. From an early age, Sam already knew the hardest truth there was for a young girl to know: she was exactly like her mother. It would forever be the fate she’d fight the hardest to avoid.

Cat learned this same truth slowly, albeit more alarmingly. She made a concerted, exhausting effort to conserve her abilities, particularly from her father, who was sure to notice them. When she got attention from other people she was alarmed, wondering if she had earned it. She was very pretty, people told her. Was it natural? Was she causing it somehow? She worried constantly. It didn’t seem particularly fair to her that Lam could do such odd tricks all the time and here she was, busy doing her best not to be magical. Once she got so very angry with Lam that she lost her temper and all her careful, vigilant restraint, and then something odd happened; she felt a jolt, and part of Lam—all of him was known so intimately by Cat that of course she knew it was his—slid into her, like she’d stolen it. She shoved it back in a panic and Lam collapsed on the ground, twitching violently, unable to be woken. Cat was so frightened by it she’d curled up at his side and refused to leave him for days, until her father explained it was probably something like epilepsy, a seizure disease.

“Unless you did this to him,” he posed neutrally as an alternative, and Cat, terrified she’d be sent away or locked up for wrongdoing, shook her head to protest no, no, she’d had nothing to do with it. She would never do anything to hurt Lam, she protested, which for a time was really quite true.

Unfortunately curiosity got to her, as curiosity was wont to do to cats and catastrophes alike, and the second time she tried it, she wasn’t so alarmed. She let go, which was an effort in itself, like unclenching a fist and easing her jaw and breathing more deeply, in and out, and then she just… summoned part of Lam into herself. He gave it easily, willingly, or so it seemed to her, until she asked him later how he’d felt and he couldn’t remember a single thing he’d done all day. This was very infuriating for Cat, who’d thought they’d had the most lovely afternoon together, since Lam wasn’t saying snotty things or refusing to do the things she liked, like getting ice cream and skipping stones on the lake and playing the game where they were a mysterious prince and princess trapped in an abandoned castle by a cruel and unforgiving witch named Stella. Cat was so angry with him that she didn’t speak to him for almost a week, and then she realized that she had liked him so much better than usual because Lam had not been himself at all. She had _stolen_ him, and then she became afraid again and cried, realizing that this was exactly the sort of thing her father had said that her mother would do. 

Sam was learning that even if she was secretly very like her own mother, other people didn’t have to know that if she didn’t want them to. Most people only cared about what was on the surface, and Sam was constantly developing a version of herself that was unlike her mother’s naked paranoia, her insufferable ambition that was really more like greed. Sam didn’t care about the trophies, the outdated judgment of pageants. She felt most herself when she was on a stage, but then anytime she wasn’t performing she became a ghost of herself, false and embellished, like someone passing ethereally through a dream. She was more distant from other people and their fates than ever, no matter how close to them she happened to physically get.

Cat didn’t know yet that she, like Sam, was still developing the odd power that would be her magic. She also didn’t know that she, like Sam, would ultimately find that power to be more of a curse. When Cat first saw Graves Nero, she thought she was in love. There he was, dramatic and tragic, someone for her to romantically save, only she couldn’t do it herself. She’d had to talk Lam into doing it for her, which was infuriating. Why had Lam been the one with the useful skills? In any case, Cat talked Lam into saving Graves and then she swore to an unconscious Graves silently that he would be hers, and she would take care of him. 

The next day when they saw what kind of person Graves’ father was, Cat decided to save him again. She had gotten used to using Lam by then as an extension of her own limbs; like any fine motor skill, it took some practice, but the daughter of Edward Archman had been rigorously taught the importance of frequent rehearsal for success. She closed off Graves’ father’s airway, sealing it neatly like a jar of marmalade. Lam, standing beside her, had barely even blinked.

Part of Cat wanted to tell Lam about it, because it did seem to be sort of a dreadful secret to keep to herself. She figured he ought to know, but every time she thought to say it, she panicked a bit. What if he told someone else? She was never very sure of Lam’s loyalty to her, and the more apprehensively she worried he might turn on her, the more she distanced herself from him. Which was fine, because she had Graves now, who was focused on Lam at first. But the more Cat decided she wanted Graves to look at her, the more he did. She was aware that she was once again stealing something from Lam, but it didn’t feel like she was doing something wrong. Lam didn’t even seem to like Graves, and he hadn’t even wanted to save him until Cat insisted! If anyone deserved to have him, it was Cat. If anyone should be kissed by him and doted on by him and touched by him, it was obviously Cat, who’d gotten rid of his rotten father and saved his life. Twice! So for a time she was convinced that it wasn’t magic, couldn’t have been, that was just ridiculous. After all, why _wouldn’t_ Graves fall in love with her, since she was doing everything right? 

It wasn’t exactly fair that people should love Lam more than her to begin with, in Cat’s opinion. Their father preferred him because there was no danger of being subjected to a siren, but hadn’t Cat already proven that she was the better child, more beloved and more achieving, who was willing to go out of her way to make him happy? And Graves! Whatever he felt for Lam should have been eclipsed, shouldn’t it, by having someone like Cat, who was more suited to his looks and charm anyway? It wasn’t unreasonable for her to think so. And anyway, Lam didn’t complain.

Sam, meanwhile, had not expected to lose the Miss Teen Nevada pageant, which was embarrassing now to admit. The major catalyst for motion in her life was actually stupendously stupid. She wasn’t supposed to care that she’d let her mother down—after all, who but an idiot would care what leering old men thought about her in her bikini?—but when she saw the light go out in Destiny Kinney’s eyes, she’d felt this… this… _rage_. It might have been sadness, actually, at the tangible loss of her mother’s hopes and dreams, but it came out of her like fury, so she went with it. She _relished_ it, in fact. It was this giant, destructive thing that was bigger than she was, and finally it propelled her out the door, into the night. She regretted it instantly, feeling empty and alone without Julian tagging along at her side, but she obviously couldn’t go backwards. Go back home? And live what life? Continue to exist under her mother’s thumb? Get a minimum wage job bagging groceries or worse, wind up a washed-up dancer like Destiny had been? 

Still, even that dismal outcome felt reasonably safe—her mother was savvy, at least, and yes, she’d undoubtedly rub it in Sam’s face that Sam couldn’t make it a single day without her in the real world, but at least Destiny knew how to put food on the table and get their rent sorted for the month whereas Sam hardly knew how to do anything at all—and as a result it was completely untenable. If Sam even tried to come back for Julian she’d just wind up staying, and that would only prove the worst possible thing she could imagine; that she, like her mother, was just as frightened of trying to make her own way in the outside world. And that was not—would _never_ be—who Sam Kinney was. 

Meanwhile, Cat realized on precisely the day Sam ran away from home that if she wasn’t focused on Graves, then Graves didn’t love her anymore. His attention strayed, he flirted with other girls or sometimes boys, he got irritated with her and started to annoy her. Cat felt, for the first time, a certain repulsion for him and broke up with him instantly. The next day, Graves came by looking for Lam, and then she felt angry. She felt empty and unloved and sore.

Sam was chosen for Dives. The opportunity fell into her lap, or rather, she gave her opportunity a lap dance. Cat and Lam had had their names put down for Dives since birth, owing to their grandfather’s influence, though Cat was the subject of some scrutiny by the remainder of the board, who felt she ought to show more obvious signs of magic. She sat for an additional round of examination, one more than either Lam or Graves had had to complete during their trials, and having suffered the indecency of being so abjectly humiliated, she resumed her relationship with Graves. She had learned by then that she could make use of Lam in other ways, knowing more than he did about the extent of his own power. He could summon storms, part water like glass, then seal it up again. He could make a man asphyxiate to death and light fires with a snap of his fingers. He could clot wounds and tear through skin. He was a machine gun of a person and Cat hated him. He didn’t even care to test the limits of everything he had.

Sam and Cat met on a sweltering August afternoon in the basement of the chapel, where Professor Archman taught. They had seen each other prior to that, of course. Cat made certain people knew of her and likewise, Sam was impossible not to know. Both were startlingly pretty, similarly built, each with an air of having earned her reputation. Cat was the local teen queen, Sam her obvious rival. Perhaps they might have hated each other, had Sam not leaned in very close to Cat and whispered, “Fathers, am I right?”

The early days at Dives were easy and bright, airy and idyllic. Everyone wanted to be friends, to commiserate about the difficulty of the workload and the stress of their constant performances. Cat had always been wary of overusing her influence, worried she’d become like Renata Stirling, who was infamous and annoying and largely a joke. Nobody took her seriously, and Cat did not want that for herself or for Graves, who was worth a fortune in social stock so long as he continued to be the school’s precious chosen one but would instantly lose value if anyone suspected him of being under her thumb. Not to mention what would become of _her_! Renata practically wore Andrew Iver (then a fourth year to Renata’s third) like a scarf, and all it did was convince people that Renata was evil. Cat had already had her mother for a cautionary tale, and now Renata, too? It was enough to make her double-down on falseness; on keeping the reality of herself to herself.

Sam felt differently. For her Renata was familiar, like someone she would have known back in Vegas. Someone pretty and sad and waiting to be filled, like an empty box. There was a certain vacancy about the place Sam had come from and that loneliness was acute, but universal. Where Cat had been repulsed by her proximity to Renata—the way the outcome of her own life would always lean one way or another, toward Renata’s or something else, like a tightrope walker or the edge of a knife—Sam was comforted by it. In Sam’s mind, which was flooded with deaths and destinies, Renata was proof that a person and their magic were not the same. Cat, though, disagreed. Renata’s power was desire and yet she wanted only to be desired, to the point where she would risk everything, let it destroy her. That irony was precisely the fate that Cat Archman had always feared. 

At Dives, Sam finally felt she was escaping her dismal fate. As a result, she became a kinder version of herself, more thoughtful. It was just as easy to please people as it was to torment them, and being widely adored was potent motivation. Nobody here knew her ugly insides, her temper and her selfishness or the fact that she’d left her brother behind. They didn’t know she was still obsessed with her mother’s approval in some way, needing impulsively to hear Destiny’s voice. No, that neediness, that vulnerability was easy to obscure at Dives, where Sam was more myth than student. She had the glow of escape about her, and that made her glamorous, enigmatic. It was not that surprising, then, when she attracted the attention of both Lam and Graves.

And Cat—oh, Cat was sick of Graves, sick of school, sick of her father’s messy handwriting, the transcriptions she was always doing that made her eyes blur and her fingers ache. Keeping her boyfriend was a drain, a literal sap of her energy. She hated her brother, who did nothing and still remained their father’s favorite. She had been so good—for a lifetime she’d been _so good!_ —and she’d saved Graves’ life twice, and did he even care? No, not even remotely. The work at Dives was hard. Composition was impossible, lyrics were the worst. What could she say honestly that wasn’t giving everything about herself away? Cat was melting, spiraling, devolving. Sam was by nature a bit wild and finally, with her, Cat could cut loose. They got tattoos, Sam chopped her hair, Cat dyed hers. They drank and smoked and danced with strangers. Have him if you want! Cat told Sam about Graves, and Sam rolled her eyes, Whatever. I’ll share him with you, Cat did not say, but she thought for a moment she would share everything with Sam. Because as long as Sam stuck by her, she could finally, finally be free. 

Not that Cat’s fears were fully gone. They were reflexive by then, like a muscle twitch. It was on a particularly wild night while Cat watched Sam coax a slurring, half-conscious Renata into the bathtub that her heart started to thud wildly, fearfully. She had a terribly vile idea and tried to dismiss it. She thought no no that’s crazy, but then she thought, is it? 

And then she knocked on Andrew Iver’s door. 

Ultimately she wasn’t entirely sober, so the plan was hazy at best. This was the man who had destroyed Renata Stirling, Cat’s plausible fate, so the best way to defeat it was to defeat her, wasn’t it? To prove something about Renata’s weakness, and the fact that Cat was not the same. Yes, Catastrophe Archman was not the natural talent Renata Stirling was, and no, she did not have the irresistible charm of Samara Kinney, but she had something else. Power. No, no, control. What Cat had that the others did not was _control_. Sam still called her mother once a month because she couldn’t help it. Compulsion. Cat did not have that. Renata had wanted love so badly she was willing to debase herself for it. Cat was not like her. She would not have married a man she could only half-stand just to curate some future that her own child would steal. Cat was not her mother. She proved it when she fucked Andrew Iver that night on his desk and then wiped her lipstick from his neck, telling him to jump off a bridge rather than call.

It didn’t heal her. Worse, something was happening to Sam. Cat had always known there was part of Sam that didn’t fully belong to her, because Sam cared about Olympia and Em and the others who were just more people to potentially dig up Cat’s secrets, which Cat detested, just in the general sense. She felt powerless, which she resented. It was one thing for her to offer Graves to Sam, for them to want her blessing, but now Sam and Graves were circling each other and pretending they weren’t, which Cat profoundly disliked. She wound up in Iver’s office a few more times, just to have something she could bend at her disposal. She stole parts of Lam just to play with his powers, flicking him on and off like a light switch, learning that if she didn’t control him while she did it, he just existed on auto-pilot, getting into fights or taking drugs and always, always waking up with no recollection of what he’d done. 

The worst part was how nobody noticed. Nobody cared. On the outside Cat was still careful not to let things slip, just as she’d always been, but shouldn’t Sam have seen it? Graves and Lam never had, but they were different. Sam was bound to her, pinkie-sworn, secured by the oaths of sisterhood or something. Wasn’t she? 

Cat felt sick, increasingly. Something was twisting her inside out, corrupting her heart, and she knew, somehow, it was Sam. 

Sam, meanwhile, had gone home to see Julian, feeling like it was finally safe to reveal where she’d been, and to prove that she’d made herself a success. She was a bard! At a fancy school and everything! How properly adventurous. Before she’d just been trash, but now she was really something. She had this plan, this vision of her life where she’d open her arms to him and he’d probably cry and come with her, or maybe he’d just be proud of her. Maybe if she no longer had the guilt of abandoning him, she could finally move on with her life. 

But Julian ran away from her and got hurt and so Sam shoved it from her mind, securing the door on her old life. And then Graves, he was everywhere, always tempting, and Sam was weak because she was sad. She loved Lam Archman but he wasn’t for her and Graves wasn’t for her either, because every night Sam dreamed of Cat. But she had kissed Cat once, playfully on the lips and then slower, like the scene from _Cruel Intentions_ that made even Sam question what she wanted from sex, but it wasn’t… anything. It was just vacant and blank, and not in a familiar way, like with Renata. Increasingly Sam questioned what she really knew about Cat, who was secretive and moody and reclusive. Every time she saw her fate, it was Cat’s face looking down at hers, like a reflection. It was her face and Cat’s combined on a sea of glass, their lips woven together like a braid.

But Graves! Unbearable at first and then more so, worse. Sam was no saint and gave in, reluctantly at first and then hungrily, aching. He reminded her of all her daydreams, the yearnings of her past. She knew he wasn’t her ending, but who could resist the denouement? 

They were ravenous for each other, secretly. So insatiable that Sam made her way to the women’s clinic that Lam had once told her about because she’d missed a period, she was swollen and sick, uh oh. How had it happened? She wasn’t careless, had made no mistakes, and yet there they were. Part of her was filled with dread, the other part of her blooming with hope. Maybe she and Graves could run away together, start fresh? Cat would never stand for it but Cat was needy, honestly. Sam had never done well with people who needed her. Look at Julian! Lam would never forgive her either, but so be it. Lam wasn’t hers anyway, and she was only hurting him more each day she stayed.

At the clinic, though, Sam saw something odd; her own name, a few time slots before hers, signed in handwriting she recognized. Ah, so Cat had been here. It made sense that Cat was seeing someone else while Graves was occupied with Sam, but who could it have been? Sam waited for her test results and racked her brain, thinking. Was it possibly…? No, no, Cat would never. Except that Cat so very obviously would. 

Inoperable, was the response from the doctor. Terminal. Late stage. Looked like pregnancy at first but unfortunately the test was a false positive, that tended to happen. So sorry. So very sorry, treatment will have to start right away if you want a fighting chance. Sam’s brain broke; this wasn’t her ending, she hadn’t seen it this way. This wasn’t it and it broke her, confusion! She barged into Iver’s office and confronted him, called him a worthless piece of shit, a fucking worm. She’d written one of her best songs about him, not that he needed to know that, but she had! True it was from Renata’s perspective, because what the shit did Sam know about love? She knew about regret, and hunger. She knew about running away without looking back. But Renata had loved him and now he’d done this, with Cat? Taking advantage of a student? Everyone knew that all Cat wanted was someone to care about her, daddy problems, clear as day! But Iver told her she knew nothing, she’d amount to nothing, and Sam’s heart throbbed: I know. She’d turn him in, she threatened shrilly, but didn’t. Em tried to help her and couldn’t. The summer was passing by in a blur. 

She’d have to leave, Sam decided. She couldn’t waste away here, not at beautiful, beloved Dives, even though she knew her death was here, waiting. Her destiny was here, closer every day, but whatever it was, she didn’t want it. She refused to accept it. She called Julian and mailed him her songs. She told Lam about his destiny and cried when he cried, wishing he’d yelled. She said Graves I’m leaving, don’t look at me like that, I don’t belong here so just don’t make a fuss, come for one last swim. Graves was angry, he refused. She promised Renata something, nothing, to make her feel better about Sam’s abandonment. Another person in Renata’s life, gone. The only person Sam didn’t tell was Cat, who found her anyway. Because that’s what destiny meant.

Jesus Sam, were you just going to slip out in the night? (Don’t I matter to you?)

Maybe, yeah. I’ve done it to plenty of people before. (Shut up Cat, do you think this is easy?)

You can’t just leave me here! (How can you leave me when you know I'll have nothing left?)

What were you doing with Iver? (You’re not who I thought you were.)

Oh come on, don’t change the subject. (In my defense, you left me alone!)

You used my name! (I’m not yours to play with.)

So what? Use mine! I don’t care. (If you’d been there, maybe I would have been braver.)

You know how Renata feels about him! (If you’re not loyal to her, are you loyal to me?)

Fuck Renata! Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel? (I exist too, Sam!)

Oh give it a rest Cat, you can’t keep doing this. (I’m tired and sick, and it’s starting to hurt.)

Doing what? (How dare you?)

This poor nobody-loves-me routine, it’s exhausting. (I can’t fix you. I’m sorry. Nobody can.)

Excuse me? (How. Dare. You.)

Of course nobody loves you, Cat! You don’t know how to love them! (It occurred to Sam that she was goading Cat, baiting her. It felt dangerous and she thrilled with it. Control.)

Are you serious? (Cat was pale with shock and fury.) 

I think you do something to Graves. And to Lam. (Taunting, teasing, riling her up.) Did Iver knock you up, was that what happened? And you knew you’d wind up just like your mom.

Shut up. (Dangerously quiet; I should never have told you that.)

Or what? (A loud bark of laughter.) What can you do to me, Cat, drain me? Use me? Force me to love you? It’ll still be fake, Catastrophe. For you it will never be real.

Shut up, Sam. Shut up right now.

You think Renata’s pathetic, but you’re the pathetic one. You had to prove you could beat her at her own game but instead you just got caught in Iver’s web, didn’t you?

Stop talking. 

(So close, so close. No hospital beds, no ventilators. This would be perfect. Here on the lake! Serendipitous, serene.) You know, I’ve never actually given a fuck about you, Cat. But you were just so easy.

Stop.

You’re so _desperate_ , Cat! You try so fucking hard, you make it look exhausting— 

Stop it. Stop. (Coming undone, coming apart.)

It must be killing you that Graves loves me. That your father thinks I have a future and you don’t. That your own brother would choose me over you. God, it must keep you up at night, doesn’t it? (Nearly there now.)

Sam, you fucking bitch— 

I’ll tell you a secret, Catastrophe Archman. You may be my destiny, but I’m yours. You’ll remember me until the day you die, and believe me, I feel sorry for you. Because when it’s your turn I’ll already be long gone from here, and you’ll still be nothing. Nothing. You know why? Because you’re _alone_ , Cat. You’ll always be alone. No amount of magic can make someone love you, Cat, not ever, and I feel sorry for you! 

(Silence.)

In the days following Sam’s death, Cat’s grief was real. She felt the whole thing had been a mystery. Who had that been on the lake that day? That wasn’t the Sam she knew, the Sam she loved, so it couldn’t have been Sam at all. And that certainly wasn’t Cat, who was always in control. She would think about the day and draw a blank, much like Lam and his blackouts. How could it have been her? Maybe it wasn’t. For a few days she successfully convinced herself she hadn’t been anywhere near the lake at all.

But she forgot one thing about Sam: that she had been a mystery. That people would speculate. That people would _push_. That hadn’t been the case with Graves’ father, whom no one had missed. But even people who hadn’t really known Sam (which was, in Cat’s opinion, everyone) felt connected to her death in some way. She’d been pregnant! She’d been having an affair! She did it on purpose! Apparently crazy ran in the family, and speaking of crazy, her maniac brother was coming to Dives. Cat resumed her relationship with Graves, ready to hide inside it. Graves would love her. (No he wouldn’t, Sam’s voice snickered.) Graves would shield her. (Not for long! Sam’s voice sang.) In the meantime, who would suspect her? Not Julian Kinney. Cat would make sure, at least, of that.

She hated that he was thoughtful and kind. She hated that every aspect of Sam she might have wanted for herself was really Julian’s in the end. He was caring, soothing, hopeful. Graves unglued himself from Cat again and she didn’t even care, because Julian looked at her like maybe he would love her if she asked, and maybe if she did, then Sam’s voice would finally be silenced. (But would it be real? Sam’s voice laughed in Cat’s ear.)

(How can you ever be sure?)

It was wrong, obviously. The secret was too much, impossible to keep. What if life was different, if Cat had gotten to love Julian first, instead of Sam? But then Sam was right, it was too late, because it would always be her face that Cat would see whenever she closed her eyes. It was Sam who would be Cat’s undoing. Twin destinies, mirror-images on the glassy lake of fate. 

Faintly, distantly, the small bit of Cat that remained in her body was aware that Sam’s ghost, her spirit, was inside her, doing something. Using her, and at first Cat thought again, as she always did, control, control, control, but then she gave it up and let the powerlessness wash over her, tired and worn out and dull. Call it numbness, call it surrender. What would Sam do? Kill her, maybe, if she was angry enough. Would Cat even mind? Maybe not. She’d wind up like her mother after all, killed by something of her own making, and there was something oddly exquisite about that. Symmetrical, at least. 

Blended into Cat’s thoughts were Sam’s, her sense of things undone, unsorted. Destiny! What was destiny? Inescapable, more so than death, but what did that actually mean? How had they imprinted on each other like this, like scars? From Cat’s chest came a bubble of Sam’s hysteria, delirious and false.

 _Your fate’s come calling_ , Sam thought in Cat’s head, the sound of it so insistent it must have been her sole purpose since she’d left this world, and wearily, Cat laughed.

_You said you didn’t love me, but it’s me you came back for, isn’t it?_

Destiny always means something if you let it.

_You said you didn’t love me, but look how badly, how terribly, how much._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's song is "My Own Soul's Warning." Thank you once again for reading! Always so happy to see you here.


	11. A Little Tenderness and Truth

Julian opened his eyes to find that he was somewhere very familiar. Overly familiar, in fact. Troublingly familiar. The walls were precisely as he remembered them; not that he’d really expected Destiny to change anything in his absence, but the peeling wallpaper was the same and the linoleum floor was the same and it smelled a little like cigarette smoke and nail polish remover, like it always did. 

He slowly sat up, increasingly aware with each modicum of motion that he was hot, and violently thirsty. Outside it was probably a hundred degrees, as ever. He’d been sleeping on the sofa, as he always did, and rose to his feet, stretching out the awkward misalignment in his spine. He kept his things in a dresser that was shoved into the hallway closet, which didn’t shut all the way, but that was how it was, so he didn’t spare much thought for it. His mother always preferred him to keep his shoes out of the entryway, since the appearance of men’s artifacts made other men skittish. Julian had shared a bedroom with Sam until he’d turned twelve, at which point Sam began to protest that sharing a room at her stage of advancing womanhood was essentially terrorism. Destiny said Julian could sleep in her room, but he hadn’t liked doing it, feeling that was much worse. Ergo, sofa. 

From the kitchen, the kettle—who might have been drinking tea in this weather Julian could not imagine, though it could just as easily have been for Cup of Noodles or boxed mac ‘n’ cheese—was just beginning to whistle, and then rapidly to scream.

“Is,” Julian began, and forced a swallow, aware again that his mouth was sinfully dry. “Is anyone going to get that?”

The kettle shut off with the brisk sound of footsteps, and then a little swish of blue revealed itself from behind the kitchen wall. There was a clink of dishware onto a tray, the tinkle of stirring from a spoon against the inside of a porcelain mug, and then another echoing sound of footsteps.

“Aren’t you spoiled,” said Sam, bursting into the room and setting the tray on the coffee table that also served as the Kinney’s dining table.

A bit odd that he was only now realizing it, but Sam was Julian’s first clue that this was probably not real. Funny, that. The sweat dripping down the back of his neck seemed real, and he shifted to rub it away, frowning a little.

“Am I dead?” he asked her.

“First the kettle, now ‘am I dead’? Yeesh. Missed you too, little brother,” Sam said, whirling around to sit beside him on the couch, which was still (theoretically) Julian’s unmade bed. “Well,” she said. “I guess I can’t be too surprised.”

“Sorry.” His mouth felt like it was stuffed with Kleenex. “Guess I just don’t really know what else to say.”

“True. It is technically my turn, I suppose.” She slid him his cup of tea, taking hers in hand. “So I take it you want… answers?”

“I thought you were in Cat’s body,” Julian said, remembering the odd look on Cat’s face before he felt himself lose consciousness, which must be what he was doing now. 

“Oh, I am,” Sam confirmed. 

“So how are you here?”

“I’m dead, Julian,” she said. “My consciousness is like, kind of a non-issue.”

Ambiguous, but fair. “Then is this real, or…?”

“There are realer things,” she said. “Faker ones, too.” She smiled a little into her cup, faintly. “You’ll probably be out for the next few minutes or so.”

“Oh.” He glanced down at the cup in front of him.

“Which is long enough for tea,” Sam pointed out, nudging the cup towards him again.

“Right. Yeah, sorry.” It’s too fucking sweltering for tea, he wanted to say, but when he lifted the cup to his lips, he found that was no longer an issue, or perhaps never had been. Apparently this was a mind over matter situation, not that he knew what that meant in practical terms. “I did miss you,” he managed when he swallowed, although missing did not seem to be the sentiment he meant. His mouth itched with it, the inaccuracy, or perhaps the inadequacy. He had, after all, thought about her every day. The concept that she had been gone from him entirely was nearly a foreign one. 

“Oh I know, Jules, I know,” Sam said, cooing at him in the motherly way she sometimes used with him. He’d always thought she did it specifically because Destiny didn’t. “You’ve been very busy, haven’t you?”

“A bit,” he acknowledged uncomfortably, because he wasn’t sure whether it would be rude to ask what she’d been up to. What exactly did death mean in terms of daily activities? He wasn’t strictly sure he wanted to know, although he did have other questions. “So um, Sam?”

“Yes?” She looked up at him, eyes wide as she took a sip of tea.

“Your… um. Your death,” Julian managed awkwardly, cradling his cup in his hands like a small wounded bird. “Was it…” He trailed off. “Er, was it… So were you sick, or…?”

“I thought I was,” Sam said distractedly. “Although if they didn’t mention anything to you or Destiny then possibly Em did have some effect. Hm.” She considered this to herself. “Well, someone ought to tell Em that, though no doubt they’ll handle it badly. _Love_ Em,” she added emphatically to Julian, “but never very good with handling power, poor thing. Always a bit resentful of anything that seemed like a miracle. Religious reasons, I think.”

“Oh. But was it—?” Julian stopped himself, suddenly very itchy. “Did you, um?”

“Oh, Julian, just ask me, won’t you?” Sam said impatiently. “This is a terrible use of your time.”

“Right, well—” The question of asking outright how she’d died seemed sort of gauche, though thankfully he didn’t have time to decide on proper wording.

“It was Cat,” Sam said in lieu of waiting for Julian’s sense of decorum to catch up with his capacity for speech. “To make a long story short. Though it wasn’t entirely her fault, as I did lure her into it.” Sam smiled a little, as if this was a funny thing that happened on campus last Tuesday instead of her own mortal end. “I always sort of thought she could do something funny when it came to Lam. Stealing his power and whatnot. She was always so suspicious about it, sneaking off all the time like she did, but she’s not very complex, is she? Embarrassing for her, really.” 

Sam set the cup down, peering into space for a moment. The rays of desert sun that came through the window illuminated the drifting particles of dust, glowing around the silhouette of her cheek. 

“I do love Cat, you know,” she said, “in a sort of sad and difficult way. Though I can’t say it doesn’t make me feel wonderfully smug to know she’s the one who’s got to live with what she’s done.”

She shrugged, turning back to Julian. “You’re quite taken with her,” she observed over her cup.

Julian, who was still trying to process what Sam had just told him, stumbled over an answer. “I… Well, I had no idea th-”

“Jules, please don’t,” Sam sighed. “You know she’s a siren, don’t you? It’s probably not even your fault.”

Somehow that made it worse, to think Sam believed he’d just been floating along, anchorless. Powerless to the woman who’d ended her life. He hadn’t decided how to feel about the life-ending part, but he resisted the concept of helplessness with a sort of full-bodied opposition. 

“I don’t think that’s fair t-”

“Don’t defend her,” Sam said tiredly. “She _did_ kill me.”

He knew this was true, sort of—very distantly, and in an only half-functional way—but still felt it was rather unfair of Sam to be so impatient with him. 

“I’m defending myself,” he said, and then, with slightly less conviction, “or trying to, anyway.”

Sam fixed him with a look he didn’t know how to interpret.

“Is there… something specific that you wanted me to know?” he asked her. “I mean, since you’re here and all. And you left me all those songs.”

“Well, you already know it now, don’t you? And I sent you the songs because I trust you—though, frankly, when it comes to that I'm not exactly spoiled for choice." She exchanged a knowing glance with him. "And as for why I'm here, I needed you out of the way for a bit,” she added. “I’m actually sort of using you for something at the moment.”

“Oh.” Part of him wanted to laugh. “You’re not going to kill Cat or anything, are you?”

“No. But I thought I’d kill Iver,” Sam said.

“Oh,” said Julian.

“Using Cat’s body,” Sam clarified.

“Right.” Hm.

“When I realized you were calling me back I thought, you know, I’d have a chance to expose Cat for everything she is and she’d probably go to prison for it. So really it’s kind of a wash as far as killing goes,” Sam concluded, adding offhandedly, “Hungry?”

“Not really,” said Julian, who still didn’t quite know what to feel.

“Probably best, since we’re using your consciousness to recreate all this,” Sam said, waving around at their surroundings. “By the way, isn’t Lam a darling?”

“That’s not the word I’d use,” Julian said, finding this to be a rather uncomfortable question given that the most recent conversation he’d had with Lam was not a very good one; "You’re just horny and dying," et cetera and so on, which Julian felt was a bit unfairly demoralizing.

“Oh, honey, it’s not his fault,” Sam said. “He knows things you don’t. I’d tell you, too, but you’re better without answers,” she offered him apologetically, sipping her tea again. He realized then that her cup was not actually losing any liquid each time she drank.

“Lam knows things… about _my_ future?” Julian asked, and Sam nodded.

“I was having a bit of a weak moment,” she admitted. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I felt he was most likely to fall apart once I left like I’d planned to. Well, him and Graves, I suppose,” she said, her eyes going a bit distant. “Actually, I really thought Graves would come with me. I honestly thought he wanted to. But then I figured out Cat was probably stopping him and then I just got a bit fed up with all of it, you know? And I knew you’d come back for me.” She smiled at him, reaching out to touch his cheek. “As long as you’re around, I’ll never be gone.”

Julian shifted in his seat, setting the cup down on the tray. 

“So you knew I’d be an orpheus?” he said to his hands.

“Not exactly,” she said. “But I do know _you_ , Julian. You were angry with me before and I know, I understand. But we’ve always had nothing but each other,” she said. “Haven’t we? Until Dives.”

Something about her knowing that was true for him in her absence made Julian feel even twitchier. “So you did want me to come after you, then?”

“Of course.” She smiled at him affectionately. “I wanted you to have what I had. And more importantly, I want you to have the things I should have had.”

“Like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Success. Fame and glory.” She winked at him.

For some reason, that made Julian think of Lam; of all the times he’d asked whether Lam was grieving or atoning. It struck Julian as oddly parallel to himself. Had he arrived here or had he always been here? Waiting for Sam, restlessly, to decide for him what he should be.

He understood now why Lam had not let him say what he was trying to say. Lam must not have believed him capable of even knowing it for himself.

“You know,” Julian commented slowly, “Lam didn’t want me to do this at first.”

“Oh?” Sam said, conversationally.

“Well, he sort of implied that if you were at peace then we might be disturbing you or something.”

“Oh.” Sam waved it away. “I’m sure he just meant that he was feeling guilty about the whole thing. Cat using him and all that.”

“Is that what it was?” Julian said, thinking of Lam’s face and how blank it had been when Sam-in-Cat had turned away from him.

“Yes. Well, I think so. Unfortunately death doesn’t come with total omniscience,” Sam said, “but I think so. I mean if she can drain other people, why not her twin?”

“Right.” He didn’t like it, but it was what it was. “But anyway, he said you might be at peace, but by the sound of it—”

“I told you, he just didn’t want you to find out what he’d thought he’d done.”

“Yeah, but I think he _also_ —”

“I don’t have to be at peace,” Sam cut in irritably. “First of all that sounds idiotic, and secondly, why should I? I’m not dead. Not completely. You proved it,” she pointed out. “And if I’m going to appear every time you sing, then how can I ever be gone?”

Julian opened his mouth, then closed it. “So it’s really you, then? Every time?”

“Yes, it’s really me,” Sam said exasperatedly, as if she couldn’t believe he hadn’t read the memo she sent around to the office about this exact thing. “Was the ‘orpheus’ thing unclear to you?”

“Well, it just seems like sort of a bad situation,” Julian said.

“Why? I get to still be alive. I get to be young forever.” She shrugged. “Overall it’s not a terrible situation. I don’t really think you should feel badly about it.”

“I actually meant for me,” Julian said, and Sam gave him a quizzical sort of look. “I meant that it seems like a bad situation for me,” he clarified slowly.

It was the first time he seemed to have genuinely stunned her. “But I thought you missed me.”

“Of course I do. Of course,” he said. “But doesn’t it also seem a bit like maybe I don’t get to live if you do?”

“Of course you’re alive. You’re breathing, aren’t you? Walking and talking?”

He actually wasn’t sure, given everything, but supposedly yes. “Yeah, but—”

“And anyway, it’s you doing it, Jules. You do understand that, don’t you?” Sam told him in one of her slightly condescending voices. “You’re the orpheus. I don’t bring _myself_ back. _You_ bring me back. Orpheus came back for Eurydice. She didn’t drag him.” Her voice was sharp and insistent. “ _He_ was the one who didn’t want to let go—”

“And he probably fucked it up anyway,” Julian said. “Because the person he brought back from the Underworld wasn’t even her. Not really.”

“Well, no one’s ever what anyone else thinks they are,” Sam said dismissively. 

“I guess not,” Julian said, with a surprising amount of vehemence.

Sam turned away, and so did he. It seemed to have cost him something, because the rest of the room lost its definition, smelling instead of spilled wine and candles.

“This isn’t what I thought we were going to say to each other,” Julian said eventually.

Sam took a moment, fidgeting with her nail beds.

“Well, people change, don’t they?” she said, a bit strained, but not angry. “It’s been years. We’ve been through a lot.”

“Yes. I’m unwell,” commented Julian drily.

“Yeah? Well I’m dead,” said Sam.

He smiled then, unexpectedly, and started to laugh, and he could feel that although she was fighting it, Sam was laughing, too.

“I just…” He sighed. “Really, all I want you to know is that I love you,” he said. “I always have, I always will. More than anything or anyone, and I wish I’d been able to tell you that when you needed me.” He left out the anger, the pain, the loneliness and confusion. It seemed less important that she carry that part around wherever it was she went next, and he had the sneaking suspicion that if he didn’t need her to bear that weight, then maybe he didn’t have to, either.

“I know,” she said. “I knew it then. And I love you too, Jules, over everything.”

“Except for you?” he asked, aiming for levity.

“Yeah,” she said, half-smiling. “Except for me.”

He reached over, placing a hand securely on hers. 

“It’s hard only seeing parts of you,” he said. “Just… what I saw, or what I remembered, or what other people thought. The whole you was so much more complicated.”

“I like to think so,” she agreed, looping his arm through her own. “Though I think maybe I didn’t see you quite the way I should have.”

“I don’t think there was much of me to see before you brought me to Dives,” he admitted.

“True,” she said. “You’re welcome.”

They smiled at each other then, more mutually this time. More fondly.

“What I was trying to say earlier about Lam,” Julian ventured, “is that I think he really does want you to be at peace. To _find_ peace, somehow.”

“Well, people always think peace is the same thing as answers,” Sam said. “It really isn’t.”

“No,” Julian agreed, because so far, having the answers had not really changed anything about how he felt. 

“You know, I think people choose peace,” Sam said. “It’s the opposite of destiny in a way. You can’t be led to it. You can’t stumble over it. You don’t get assigned it in some deus ex machina kind of way, like fate.”

“Archman said something similar,” Julian said. “About how life is a series of choices.” He’d said something similar himself, too, about choosing to be alive, only he hadn’t realized now that he’d meant it. He hadn’t actually registered before that his problem—his nothingness—had always been his to suffer or solve. 

“I always liked Archman,” Sam admitted. “Almost as much I hated Iver.”

“Iver is genuinely terrible,” Julian said.

“Yes. Nobody will miss him.”

“No.” Julian cleared his throat. “But I’m not sure that means he should… die?”

Sam gave a heavy, theatrical sigh.

“Fine,” she said. “I suppose not. But he should _not_ work at a school.”

“True.”

“And especially not this one.”

“Also true.”

“And Renata deserves something. She’s a good person, really.”

“Is she?”

“Well, good enough. And Cat—”

Julian waited, and Sam let out a slow, thin exhale.

“Catastrophe Archman,” she finally said, “is the only person in this world I feel as if I understand perfectly, and I think she probably feels the same way about me. Not that I fully enjoy knowing that.” She grimaced, then shrugged. “I just feel like maybe we’re two sides of the same villain. Like for every shade of me there's a matching one of her, only we never quite knew how to not resent each other for that.”

Julian thought that was probably true in a way, minus one thing.

“You were always a hero for me,” he said.

“Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?” Sam smiled at him, a little sadly this time. “You’re going to let me go,” she said with a sudden volatility. “You’re not going to look back, are you?”

“Technically I already did,” he said. “Séance and all that.”

“No, not really. Not actually.” She gave a loud sigh, sagging into the sofa. “I’ll be honest, I’m not that thrilled about being dead.”

“You’re not dead for Graves,” Julian said. “Or for Lam. Or for me.”

“Certainly not for Cat,” Sam said. “She’ll keep me alive.”

She smiled then, brilliantly, her entire face alighting with joy.

“It’s weird how happy you are about that,” Julian remarked, and Sam laughed aloud, leaning over to throw her arms around him.

“You’re so very whole and complex, Jules,” she told him. “It’s wonderful. A fucking revelation.”

“Of course I am,” he said. “I’m with you.”

She snuggled up to him and he felt, for the first time, that this was definitely not real, because he should have felt the softness of her hair or the familiar smell of her shampoo. But he couldn’t feel or smell anything except for the vague sense that something was ablaze somewhere, and the fact that his throat was dry, and he was hot.

“Is something burning?” he asked her, sniffing the air, but she wasn’t listening.

“Tell Skit I was wrong about small dreams,” she said, her eyes closed while she rested her cheek against his chest. “Tell Reid to stay happy and tell Em to be brave. Kiss Olympia for me, make sure she smiles, and tell Graves I did love him and I’m sorry I didn’t do it very well, I was never very good at it. And tell Lam—”

She broke off just as Julian became aware that he was lying on his back, precisely as he’d been when he first woke up here, and Sam’s face leaned over his, a glimmer of tears in her eyes.

“Never mind. You’ll know exactly what to say to Lam,” she said, and kissed his forehead, and then, in a blink, she was gone.

* * *

Julian woke up flat on his back in Renata’s front room, the sound of a scream manifesting from somewhere on his left. His head felt heavy and his body was like a stone, immobilized with sluggishness. He turned his head hazily, from the fire in the hearth to the flames dancing from the candles, to find that Iver was also on the ground, Renata hysterical on top of him.

At least half the room’s occupants had fled. Those who remained were shouting unintelligibly, something like “is he dead?” while Julian forced himself upright. Nobody was paying him any attention, but someone—Graves, Julian realized—was holding Lam upright, while Cat was nearby, limp in Olympia’s arms. Em had a hand on Iver’s throat, Reid was on his phone with a worried look on his face, and Skit was shouting instructions at Em that neither of them seemed to actually understand. 

_Whatever answer you think you’ll get from Sam’s ghost, it won’t fix you_ , Cat’s voice reminded Julian. _It won’t heal you._

That was true. Sort of. 

Julian sat up fully, watching a change come over Renata’s face. “He’s breathing,” she said with relief, “he’s breathing,” and there were tears streaming down her face, dripping onto Iver’s unconscious body. 

Evidently Sam had indeed changed her mind, Julian thought with a sense of satisfaction, as had Renata, apparently. Her thirst for vengeance seemed to have cooled, if his observations proved correct. Troubling as far as devotion went, but she had loved Iver, after all. Better that that meant something.

Julian rose to his feet, gingerly testing his steps (he was fine, just drained), and tapped Graves lightly on his shoulder.

“Oh shit, Julian,” said Graves, startling. “Jesus, I thought—”

“Hey,” Julian said, gesturing to Lam, who was lifting his head dizzily, like waking from a trance. “I’ll take him.”

“What?” said Graves, who either hadn’t heard him or didn’t understand. 

“I’ll take him. You good?” Julian asked Lam, who frowned at him.

“Did I—?”

“Yep,” said Julian, and beckoned to him. “Come on. Party’s over. Let’s go home.”

“What?” said Graves again, who then got distracted by Cat, who was also waking. 

“I got him,” Julian assured Graves, taking Lam by the shoulder and directing him to the door. Behind him, voices were growing loud again as the shock wore off and people began to second-guess their use of drugs. “Can you walk okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Lam. 

“You sure?” 

They emerged outside and Julian shivered, realizing that being soaked through with sweat was not a fantastic precursor to cold night air. 

“I’m fine,” said Lam again.

They walked in silence down the block to Archman’s car, Julian cutting a sidelong glance to Lam. He looked dazed, still, and slightly disheveled. Like he’d dragged himself out of a pit.

“So,” Julian said, “we may have discovered the source of your blackouts.”

“An unexpected outcome,” said Lam blandly. “What was it? Black magic?”

“Your sister.”

“Close enough,” Lam said, and then blinked, belatedly processing Julian’s answer. “Is she okay?”

“I think so. If not, I’m pretty sure she will be.”

“If you want to go back and check on her—”

“Lam, shut up. I want to be here and I am,” said Julian, unlocking the car and pulling the door open to drop into the driver’s seat.

Lam followed suit without protest, practically a miracle, and fiddled with the dials on the vents, tacitly professing to the mortal weakness of cold.

“Did you talk to Sam?” he asked.

“Yes,” Julian said, waiting for the windows to defrost. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“That seems unlikely,” said Lam.

“I know. But it wasn’t.”

“You seem like you’re in a weird mood.”

“I am, a bit. I did just see my dead sister.”

“How was it?”

“Grand,” said Julian.

And then, for whatever reason, Lam laughed, and so did he.

“So it was Cat, then?” Lam asked, rubbing the back of his neck. “This whole time?”

“Yes. How surprising is that information on a scale of one to ten?”

“Mm, a solid three,” said Lam, adding facetiously, “I always knew she had it in her.”

“You’re being very calm about this,” Julian noted.

“Nonsense Jules, I’m always calm. If anything, you’re unusually calm.”

“Me? I’m fundamentally unwell.”

“Aren’t we all,” Lam said, as Julian pulled into the street, taking the slick roads back to the conservatory.

“Can I ask you something?” Julian said.

“Seems like you already are.”

“May I continue asking you things?”

“If you like,” Lam conceded loftily.

Julian rolled his eyes. “Were you… maybe a bit in love with Graves?”

Lam considered it a moment.

“Maybe a bit,” he said. “But he was better suited for Cat.”

“Sam told me Cat’s a siren.”

“Oh, obviously,” Lam said as if Julian should have already known this. “My mother was, too. But love is kind of an odd, debilitating thing regardless of what causes it, isn’t it? We’re all a bit powerless to it in some way or another. Supernatural or otherwise.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I do.”

“You’re kind of soft, aren’t you?”

“Take that back or I’ll throw myself into the street,” said Lam.

Julian hid a smile as he flicked the left turn signal on, shaking his head.

“She wouldn’t tell me any details about what happens to me in my future,” he said.

“Good,” said Lam. “I’d hate to meet a version of you with any certainty. Unbearable.”

“So you prefer me stumbling around blindly?”

“Yes.”

“So you like me this way?”

“Yes.”

“So you like me,” Julian observed. 

Lam paused for a moment, adjusting the vent again.

“Yes,” he said. “And you like me.”

“Yes,” confirmed Julian, a bit annoyed that he’d been trying to say that all evening and in the end it was Lam who said it for him.

“Well, before you ask,” Lam commented, “no, I don’t know what came first.”

Julian, who’d been busy being annoyed, felt lost. “What?”

“Nero loves my sister,” Lam said with confidence, “ _and_ she probably does something to ensure that he loves her. But what came first, the chicken or the egg? Do you like me because Sam said you would, or is it actually your fate?” he mused aloud, as several things clicked into place for an increasingly irritated Julian.

“That’s what this is about?” he demanded. “All day you’ve been an absolute menace because you think I only like you because Sam told me I would?”

“It’s not entirely your fault,” said Lam calmly. “You’re very susceptible to romanticized notions of fate, Jules.”

“Okay, first of all, fuck you,” said Julian.

“Noted,” Lam confirmed, “in the minutes.”

“And secondly she never told me,” Julian said. “She has literally never said anything to me at all about this but apparently you’ve known the whole time, so like, double fuck you.”

He glanced to the side, noticing that Lam was not reacting.

“Excuse me,” Julian said. “I’m trying t-”

“Fuck me?” Lam said.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Julian replied, and slammed on the brakes, pulling over because apparently they were going to do this, now. They were going to do this right now. “Listen,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt and turning to Lam, “all I’m trying to do is tell you—”

“Jules, please. I’m thinking,” said Lam.

“Lam, for the love of god—”

Lam reached over with one arm, his palm cupping the back of Julian’s neck, and tugged him forward, kissing him squarely on the mouth. It was just a stolen bit of pressure, more rebellion than anything else.

“I said I’m thinking,” Lam said, releasing him before Julian could process the taste of his own astonishment. “So don’t rush me or I won’t figure out how to say the right thing.”

“Right,” Julian said, swallowing as he leaned away. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” He was quiet for a moment, but then added, “Not that you’ve ever said the right thing like, literally ever.”

“Jules.”

“Sorry.” Julian twitched with impatience. “But how long are you planning to sit here thinking? Because—” 

Lam reached over again with the same sudden motion, but this time Julian was ready for him, or very nearly was. His breath still caught in his throat and he felt himself spilling onto Lam’s side of the car in the same unruly sort of way, but it was more like catching a ball than shattering a windowpane this time. He thought of Renata slipping something onto his tongue and then thought solely of his tongue, and possibly Lam’s.

“I just remembered that I might be on drugs,” said Julian worriedly.

“After a conjuring like that? I doubt you have anything left in your body,” said Lam.

“Okay. Okay, sounds good.” Julian looked out the window onto the stretch of nearly-rural road, then back at Lam. “Okay, time’s up. Say something.”

“No,” said Lam.

“I’m going to get out of the car and start walking.”

“No you won’t.”

Julian pointedly flung open the car door. “Yes I w-”

“No,” Lam said, yanking him back, “you won’t.”

They were both ready that time, Julian shutting the car door just as Lam pulled him in by the collar of his woefully inadequate hoodie. Lam seemed to be asking him something and Julian responded yes yes yes, as enthusiastically as he had ever dared answer a question before. Julian’s own flaws and worries fell away like little dandelion swabs, dancing off on a breeze of utter insignificance. What did it matter if he was sad and sick and actually kind of boring and weird, just as a person/in general? The lips he was currently kissing belonged to the worst person he’d ever met and he’d never felt freer or more sure. Simply put, Julian soared. He felt with an exquisite rush of thrill that he did not have to fear this feeling, and that was rare enough that he wanted to savor it, sinfully, on his tongue for as long as he could. 

He might be weird forever, but he would never be boring again. He would never be nothing, not ever, not anymore. Not after this.

“Sam told me I would know what to say to you,” Julian said, breathless and half on top of Lam by the time they broke apart.

“And?” Lam said expectantly.

“And I think I know what to say,” Julian said.

“Well?” Lam demanded. “What is it?”

Julian kissed his mouth again, biting his lip this time for good measure.

“I’ll tell you when you’re ready,” he said, and then returned to the driver’s seat, turning the car back on to return them both safely home.

* * *

Campus was rife with rumors the next day about the events of Renata’s party, all of which were recollected poorly and with multiple flawed accounts. (Drugs.) Evidently Sam-as-Cat had revealed in great detail the extent of Cat’s various crimes, which meant she was nowhere to be found for several days. Iver, whom many gossiped had been “Vader-choked” by Cat until Renata stepped in and heroically saved him, had apparently taken some time away on the grounds of difficulty with his mental health, causing Thurston to step in for all his classes indefinitely. (Julian suspected that Sam-in-Cat had had Words with him as well, which were most likely not so delicate.)

Because the events of the party were entirely unsubstantiated rumors without a single shred of proof from any of the involved parties, nothing seemed likely to happen as far as consequences. Too many addled minds, not enough earthly explanation. And since Julian did not feel it necessary to reopen the investigation of his sister’s death—the mystery, he felt, was the only thing she might appreciate about it—they didn’t. Cat, if she wished to return to classes, could do so, as a matter of academic standing, whenever she wanted. Whether she actually would, knowing as she did what the others now knew, seemed a distinctly separate matter. In the court of public opinion, her reputation was battered and fried.

Julian did speak privately with the others, passing along the parting messages from Sam. He wasn’t quite sure how much they actually believed him; they seemed to think perhaps he’d just fainted from the effort and had a very strange dream, but at least he’d done his part. He spoke to Em last, thinking he should do it in private, though Em insisted that Olympia be allowed to stay.

“She thinks you might have actually done something,” Julian said. “Saved her, sort of, or would have if she’d gone back for more tests. Since there was nothing in her autopsy.”

Em looked thunderstruck, and then glanced over at Olympia, who frowned.

“So does that mean…?” Olympia asked, and stopped. “That’s… Em, that’s incredible,” she breathed with a sudden sense of wonder.

“Yep,” said Em morosely. 

Julian had the feeling that Em and Olympia hadn’t quite told each other everything. Or maybe someone had still been holding something back.

“She won’t let me heal her,” Em said to Julian, guessing his confusion and clearing it up with a sense of unresolved bitterness. “She thinks,” Em added in a snide voice, “that it would mean she’d owe me something.”

“Oh,” said Julian, unsure what to say next.

“Yes, of course I would owe you something. Like my _life_ ,” retorted Olympia. “But it’s not just that. It’s that I already know what happens to me, and I’ve accepted it.”

“But Sam could have been wrong!” Em argued. “There is no _one path_ for everyone. What if your destiny changes over time? What if you’re supposed to make choices, change things yourself?”

 _I think people choose peace,_ Julian heard Sam say, and watched Olympia take Em’s sullen face in both her hands with a sigh; looking, in Julian’s mind, quite peaceful.

“It’s not my destiny I’m worried about,” Olympia said. “I know why I’m here, Em.”

“But Olympia—”

Olympia leaned forward with a smile and kissed Em as Julian looked away politely; then, after a period of time he felt was sufficient, coughed.

“I’m going to be loved very well during the time that I have,” Olympia said to Em, “don’t you think? Better than most people get in a whole lifetime.”

And Em, miraculously, let out a sigh of submission. “Yes,” they said, resigned. “If that’s what you want, yes. You will be loved very, very well.”

“Good.” Olympia turned to Julian with a little glimmer of a smile. “Tell Lam I’m sorry,” she said, her expression changing with concern. “I should have known better, or been less angry—”

“Oh, Calamity responds very well to anger,” Julian said, and she laughed, rolling her eyes.

“Well, I guess that’s that, isn’t it? Don’t know what any of us will say to Cat,” she said, exchanging a look with Em. “We barely know what to say to Graves as it is.”

Julian felt the same way. He’d told Graves alone about Sam; specifically, he’d said how she wished she’d loved him better.

“No,” Graves had said, and Julian frowned.

“What?”

“No, she may have said she loved me badly, but she didn’t actually wish she'd done it better,” Graves said. “I can feel it, you know. How that memory feels for you. You feel sorry for me, don’t you?”

“Honestly? A bit,” Julian admitted. “But not for this.”

“For what, then?”

Julian didn’t want to tell him, not exactly, but he did, sort of. “For the loves you might have had, I guess.”

Graves gave him a little twitch of a smile, _you understand me and I understand you_ , and then he turned away, and Julian guessed they wouldn’t speak much again. Probably not for a while. Sometimes there was just too much, or whatever it was between them was just too heavy. Because Graves had loved Julian’s sister and also loved his sister’s killer and maybe was a little bit in love with everyone, maybe because of whatever he couldn’t love about himself. And the both of them knowing that was just really too awkward for small talk.

There was one person left to talk to, though Julian didn’t know what to say to her. Part of him wanted to say he forgave her or understood her or something, though all of that felt at least partially false. He didn’t blame her, necessarily. Not completely, not when even Sam could take partial responsibility for how things had gone. But he wasn’t about to thank her, and he certainly wasn’t sure whether he could ever ask how much of what he’d felt had been real. He doubted she would want to have that conversation, either, so instead he wrote it down. And kept writing. And he thought about Sam saying that she and Cat were two sides of the same villain, and then he wrote some more.

“I feel some small amount of obligation to intervene,” commented Lam around four in the morning, at which point Julian looked up at both him and the time.

“Oh,” said Julian.

“Indeed,” confirmed Lam.

“Worried about me, are you?”

“Worried, never. Frown lines. Though I do wonder,” Lam posed, “whether you’ve given much thought to the rest of your time at Dives.”

“Have you?” asked Julian.

“Me? My father is a professor here,” Lam said. 

“Yes? And?”

“And what?”

“And we’re talking about you, aren’t we?”

“Why should my answer be any different from yours?”

“Well, it just seems like you’ve already got what you came for,” Lam said. “Haven’t you?”

This was true on some level. Julian hadn’t been very focused lately, despite the fact that pressure was mounting for their end of term critiques. Skit had barely slept at all, Olympia was too engrossed in her work for her advisor to force any social outings, and by contrast Julian was here, his work sitting in piles untouched on his desk while he scribbled away at nothing.

“I guess on some level, yes,” he admitted. “But who knows, maybe I have a knack for it or something.”

“Or something,” Lam agreed, trying to peer over Julian’s shoulder and getting himself shoved away. 

“And anyway, have you gotten what _you_ came for?” Julian asked, holding him at arm’s length.

“I didn’t come here for any reason,” Lam said, “so that’s either a firm no or a resounding yes.”

“Surely you must have come here for something.”

“In terms of outcome? Not particularly.” Lam whirled around to fall backwards on Julian’s bed, legs still planted firmly on the floor so that he collapsed like a marionette. “I’ve been essentially nowhere and done functionally nothing,” he said, “so it’s not as if I know how to think beyond the next year or so of my life until we graduate.”

“But you must want something,” Julian said, or possibly asked.

Lam turned his head to look at him.

“You’re always asking me what I want,” Lam said. “It’s incredibly annoying.”

“I’m told that’s one of my top five qualities.”

“That implies you have four others.”

“And what do you suppose those are?”

“You eat at a reasonable pace,” said Lam. “You bathe semi-regularly.”

“My goodness, aren’t I impressive.”

“All of which is offset by the fact that you steal my clothes.”

“I do not _steal_ your clothes—”

“Of course not. You’re welcome to them.” Lam’s eyes were closed, a smile playing across his lips as he spoke, and though part of Julian knew that they still had not had an actual conversation about anything that was happening to them (or between them), he continued to feel there was probably nothing they needed to put in words. For all he knew it might take Lam several years to work himself through this, if he ever did.

“You know,” Julian said, “you never told me how your father reacted to all of this.”

“Mm. He said he had his suspicions about Cat,” Lam said. “But apparently figured that if I wanted an intervention I would have asked for one.”

A very Archman school of thought. “So does he think you’re complicit in this or something?”

“Well, my father typically does me the very great favor of never believing I’m a victim of anything aside from my own choices,” Lam said drily, which Julian thought probably was a favor in Lam’s mind, albeit not so much in his. “He seems to think I might have stopped her sooner if I’d cared to.”

“I guess,” Julian said, thinking of how long he’d kept Sam alive and deciding that probably wasn’t a very fair conclusion for a man without a twin to make. He also knew _he_ could have asked Lam if on some level he’d known that Cat was making use of him, but could also make a guess as to whether Lam would lie about it. Strong yes, in Julian’s opinion, and whether that lie would serve to protect himself or his sister, it wouldn’t actually clarify anything that Julian didn’t already know about Lam. 

“What will you do if she doesn’t come back?” Julian asked tangentially, because among the cornucopia of things undiscussed between them, that had been weighing on him further each day that Cat remained unaccounted for. Tomorrow (today?) it would be six days, which was obviously a reasonable amount of time for a holiday. Less so for a mysterious absence.

“That assumes that she’s actually gone,” Lam said. “Which she isn’t.”

In Julian’s opinion, there was no reason for Cat Archman to ever return to Dives. Even if she didn’t face any actual consequences, what would persuade her to try to fit back into her old life? It seemed uncomfortable, to say the least. “Can you really be so sure?”

“If it were me I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. And she isn’t much different from me.”

“I suspect,” Julian said as gently as he could, “that actually, she is.”

Lam opened one eye and squinted at him for a moment.

“About whom have you just made that disparaging comment?” Lam asked combatively, and it was maddening, really, how Julian could feel so utterly perplexed and possibly deranged by another human being and still feel very strongly a sense of being unable to move. Or possibly a sense that he had already come very, very far.

So he set down the page and climbed into his bed, waiting until Lam had shifted towards him.

“You’re being stupid,” Julian said. “And you mentioned something about an obligation to intervene?”

“Yes,” said Lam. “I think, ethically speaking, that I’m supposed to tell you to put down the song and put you to bed.”

“So put me to bed, then,” Julian said.

And Lam did, because for one reason or another, he was growing ever so much more compliant.

* * *

“Well, today’s the day then, Mr. Kinney. Up you go,” said Archman, though Julian was not paying attention. He had several reasons for this, given that he’d slept very little and was in general not very good at well-rounded nutritional breakfasts. But more importantly, there had been the very ironically timed appearance of someone unexpected in the doorframe, and Julian (along with most of the class) had been unable to concentrate on anything else for well over the last five minutes. 

Cat Archman had shown up to that day’s performance class in a pair of black jeans and her usual oversized sweater, plus an enormous brown teddy coat that reached somewhere around her shins. She’d worn a full face of makeup and no trace of an expression, taking her usual seat beside Graves, who glanced at her, then looked away, then glanced back, saying nothing. Meanwhile, Julian’s chest was suddenly very tight, like perhaps he was suffering a mix of heartburn and panic. 

She caught his eye, frowning a little, and gestured him up to the front of the classroom where Archman was waiting. “Go,” she mouthed, and Julian blinked. “We can talk later,” she added in an undertone, thinking perhaps that he wanted to discuss something, like the murder of his sister or the possession of his… Well, his roommate. Yes, his roommate. Who was helpfully stabbing him in the shoulder with a pen.

“Ouch,” said Julian belatedly, rising to his feet.

“Is that the title of your composition?” asked Archman.

It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, but no. “Er, no this is… Well, I haven’t actually titled it,” Julian said. “I just wrote it, erm. Very recently.” Four hours ago.

“Well, a certain level of preparation is always appreciated,” Archman said with a frown. “But we’re here to gauge performance, so go ahead.”

“Right. Okay.” Julian scratched his head and glanced inadvertently at Olympia, who was sitting so erect in her seat with palpable encouragement he had to instantly locate a blank spot on the back wall to focus on instead. 

“Right,” Julian said again.

A low, jangling strum of guitars began. Lam said that was common with hesitation and also vulnerability and sometimes uncertainty. Julian breathed in deeply, then out, deciding it couldn’t be any of those but one. More than anything, he wanted to be honest and sure.

The aura set in, motion, the ambient hum like a slow embrace.

“ _You were standing with your girlfriends in the street_ ,” he sang. “ _Falling back on forever, I wonder what you came to be_.”

He looked at Cat then, and saw that she was looking intently back at him.

“ _I was new in town_ ,” he told her, “ _the boy with the eager eyes. I never was a quitter, oblivious to schoolgirls’ lies_.”

Cat looked down, then back up.

“ _And when I look back on those neon nights; the leather seat, the passage rite. I feel the heat, I see the light, from Miss Atomic Bomb_ ,” Julian sang, the underlying countermelody setting in to darken the sweetness of the lyrics, “ _We’re making out, we got the radio on. You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone; you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone_.”

The song sped up then, the rhythm gaining ground, and he shifted his attention to the figure materializing beside him.

“ _Racing shadows in the moonlight_ ,” he sang to his sister, who smiled faintly at him, “ _through the desert on a hot night. For a second there we’d won, yeah we were innocent and young_.”

That part of him was always for her, and her smile broadened. He inhaled again, the drums picking up as the countermelody rang out again, steadier this time, and he let out a sound, cathartic; a note that stretched out and yawned like a release.

“ _Cast out of the night, well you got a foolish heart_ ,” he sang to Cat. “ _So you took your place, but the fall from grace was the hardest part. It feels just like a dagger buried deep in your back, you run for cover but you can’t escape the second attack; your soul was innocent, she kissed him and she painted it black, you should have seen your little face, burning for love, holding on for your life—_ ”

Cat swallowed heavily, and Julian told her, as honestly as he could, “ _All that I wanted was a little touch, a little tenderness and truth, I didn’t ask for much, no. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time—_ ”

 _In another life I meet you first,_ her voice told him, _and everything is different._

“ _Miss Atomic Bomb, we’re making out, we’ve got the radio on—you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone, you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone—_ ”

Sam’s translucent image hovered and waned, and he turned to her, holding out a hand that he knew she wouldn’t be entirely real enough to take.

“ _Racing shadows in the moonlight_ , _taking chances on a hot night. For a second there we’d won, yeah we were innocent and young_ —”

“ _The dust cloud has settled, and my eyes are clear_ ,” he sang to Sam sadly, “ _but sometimes in dreams of impact I still hear—_ ”

As the underlying chorus wept along, Julian stared at his sister, feeling a slow but inevitable undoing, like something monstrous finally loosening its claws and giving way. 

“ _Miss Atomic Bomb, I’m standing here, sweat on my skin_ ,” he told her in something uneven, barely more refined than a scream, “ _and this love that I’ve cradled is wearing thin. But I’m standing here, and you’re too late_ ,” he said, managing just barely not to let his voice shake. “ _Your shock-wave whisper has sealed your fate_.”

He closed his eyes then, letting the rest of the chorus release like a reflex, his last glimpse of Sam turning to Cat in something like a curtsy; like the bow at the end of the final act.

The chorus continued, like he’d split himself in two. “ _It feels just like a dagger buried deep in your back—_ ”

“ _It’s a proving ground_ ,” Julian murmured.

“ _You run for cover but you can’t escape the second attack—_ ”

“ _And you took a chance on a losing game_ ,” he sang, digging his nails into his palm.

“ _Miss Atomic Bomb—”_

“ _But you can’t survive when you want it all. There’s another side—_ ”

“ _Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time—_ ”

“ _Miss Atomic Bomb_ ,” Julian finished, finally opening his eyes to see a tear fall down Cat’s cheek. “ _You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone_ ,” he sang to her hoarsely, the rest of the song coming to a slow fade out. “ _You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone_.”

When the song ended he held her eye, and he was pretty sure she understood it. That whatever conversation they would have had, they’d just had it.

And as for Sam… Well. She’d appreciate the swan song.

Lam, who was watching Julian with an odd look on his face, merely tilted his head once, a little divot of thought in his brow.

“Well,” said Archman, clearing his throat. “Not bad for a first solo performance. A bit shaky at the start but you seem to have unpacked the song a bit as you went, hm?”

“Yeah,” Julian said evasively. He was suddenly feeling an odd, magnetic sort of urge to move, although maybe that was just the cold. He’d expected to feel naked or empty as a result of finally saying all the things he’d meant to say, but instead he just felt sort of overfull. Bursting.

“It’s very promising, Mr. Kinney, very promising. A great amount of work to be done in terms of your basic performance elements—”

Julian looked at Lam, who looked back at him.

“—think that’s a very fine start, and your ensemble performance will be another chance to improve before your end of term trials.”

Their ensemble. Exams. Judges and critiques. Qualifying for fourth year. The elusive, ethereal _success_. Fame and glory. Julian winced at the thought of it and Lam tilted his head again, like he was trying to read something in Julian’s face he hadn’t noticed before.

“There is of course much to be done in terms of the actual song. As far as the instrumental stretches,” began Archman, but suddenly Julian no longer possessed the capacity to hear it. “In terms of dissonance, there was a bit o-”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” announced Julian, looking meaningfully at Lam, who blinked.

“Oh,” said Archman, mildly put out by the interruption. “Can’t it wait?”

“No, not really,” Julian said, turning to the door.

“I’ll get your stuff,” said Lam loudly, leaping to his feet with Julian’s composition book in hand.

“I hardly think that’s necessary, Calamity,” commented Archman.

“I strongly disagree,” said Lam.

“Well, you’re all adults,” said Archman in apparent capitulation. “Do as you see fit.”

“Thank you,” Lam replied, pausing for a moment for something Julian didn’t look back to see, and then he raced after Julian, who was halfway up the stairs.

“Jules, what are y-”

“You don’t need much, do you?” Julian asked him. “Because I know you’ve got a thing with books but they’re like, very cumbersome.”

“I don’t,” Lam began to say, and then stopped himself. “No, I don’t need them.”

“Except for Proust?”

“Except for Proust,” Lam agreed, and then frowned at him. “What are you saying, exactly?”

He was about to give a flippant sort of answer when it occurred to Julian again that Sam was right. He _did_ know what to say to Lam, and this was it. He was a little bit astounded it had taken him this long to realize these would be the circumstances. Amazing the way things snuck up on you; positively stupefying that even a matter of hours ago there had been a bit of fog obscuring his fate—what would he do after Dives, after Sam?—and now he knew it without question. 

Peace was a choice.

“Will you come with me?” Julian said, which was probably a bigger question than anything else they had yet to discuss, but then again Lam had followed him out here, and Julian was pretty sure Lam didn’t do that for just anyone. Actually, he felt a little bit inflamed by how securely he knew that, how firmly and bodily he understood it, and how acutely it meant something to him. He was also aware that it mattered very much that he could ask, though in a more distant way. Someday he would probably be able to point to that decision with a sense of personal significance, but for now it only mattered what Lam would say. 

Luckily if Julian was bracing for doubt, he’d find none. He’d been right that Cat and Lam were different, diametrically so, though he hadn’t known exactly how he meant it when he said it. Now, he did. Now Julian understood that he’d sung Cat a goodbye song because she would never leave Dives—she would love him and he would love her in a warped sense of retrospect, in a slice of time and space that didn’t actually exist—but Lam, Lam had been waiting his whole life for someone to give him permission to disappear and not look back. Which was maybe what Julian had been waiting for, too.

So then this was destiny. 

“Where are we going?” Lam said. He looked wild-eyed, slightly feral, like a live manifestation of one of his own songs. Essentially, he was going somewhere. Functionally, he was doing something. He would finally implode the mirage, assuming that Julian could figure out what that meant. _For those who make magic_ , indeed.

“Oh. Hm. Where?” Julian hadn’t really thought about a destination, or it didn’t matter, or both. “Not sure. Is the sun setting or rising?” he finally asked, flicking the tattoo on Lam’s chest beneath his shirt, and Lam looked down.

“Dunno,” he said, half-frowning, and looked up. “Setting?”

“Then we’re going west,” said Julian.

Slowly, maddeningly, Lam’s irreverent mouth curved upwards.

 _Smile like you mean it._ That was what Sam had left behind for him.

And for once, Julian was pretty sure he would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's song was the titular "Miss Atomic Bomb." We're almost done, although I'll be back next week for an epilogue. It felt like I needed to let this moment breathe before whatever happens next? Anyway thanks for being here, this story has been fun to work on and very much what I needed! Although I did just realize that I arbitrarily changed the name of the school three chapters in, which I... cannot explain. Not even a little bit.


	12. Sam's Town

Julian woke up to a high-pitched ringing in his ears that turned out to be nothing, and then upon further consideration turned out to be his phone alarm, which he groggily managed to silence from his pocket. He lifted his head from the elaborate and uncompromising sofa (?) and squinted into an unexpected swath of sun, which was glaring menacingly through the Strip-facing window of what appeared to be—unmistakably, by the decor—one of the suites at The Venetian. 

Well, Julian thought, he could either ask himself a lot of questions he didn’t know the answer to or he could simply start moving, since according to his alarm, he was already late. It was just past eight in the morning, which by Sin City time was essentially… non-existent. His head greeted him with an opening throb, neck twinging like a cymbal crash. 

He wiped a bit of drool from the side of his face and struggled to sit fully upright, casting a glance around for Lam and then nearly stepping on him. Lam, ever inconvenient and also shirtless, was lying on his back atop the ornate area rug beneath Julian's feet. Julian reached down, nudging him while fighting the unrelenting backwash of tequila.

“Lam.” Another nudge. “I’ve got to go.”

“Mmph,” said Lam oppositionally.

“You stay here. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“Mmph.” Lam rolled over and Julian rose, calf-like and unsteady, to his feet, stumbling towards the bathroom whilst banging his shin on a side table covered with empty pizza boxes (which explained the grease stain on his pants). The sink, similarly, was an untamed landscape of beauty products, a buffet of feminine sauces and marinades like those Julian had once lived alongside (but more expensive). He took one look at himself (bad) and decided it was probably not worth it to keep looking, so then he shuffled his way to the toilet, washed his hands, and splashed a bit of water on his face, swigging a bit of hotel mouthwash that somehow reached the back of his brain before haphazardly picking his way toward the lobby. The opulence was, as ever, just sweet enough to hurt his teeth, though thankfully it was satisfactorily womblike and dark until he broke through to the hotel entrance.

A line of cabs were visible outside, the desert sun ostentatiously bright as it poured in through the hotel’s front doors. “Where to, sir?” asked a too-chipper young bellhop.

“Shh,” advised Julian with a wince, gesturing to his pounding head.

“Sorry,” the bellhop whispered, sympathetic. “Where to, sir?”

Julian gave the address and the bellhop delightedly gestured him into a cab, which Julian less-delightedly poured himself into. The door closed behind him with a resounding slam and then they were off, Julian’s foggy brain attempting to recount the events of the past twenty-four hours with little to no success.

Such was more or less the promise from Renata, who’d shown up Friday morning with the promise of debauchery and the requisite dedication to prove it true. Julian tried to locate the last thing in his head that he actually remembered doing (a club? Probably a club, possibly karaoke, though he knew he’d insisted on starting at the godlike off-strip Thai restaurant despite Renata’s protests for finery) and then, thinking better of it, decided to close his eyes, nodding off until the cab came to an abrupt stop outside the fountain of serenity that he now considered much too loud.

Julian reached for his wallet, was relieved to find that Lam had not stolen it or otherwise compromised it, paid for the ride, and tried very hard to meditate on an outcome wherein he did not embarrass himself in any way. It seemed unlikely, so he gave up and wandered into the building’s lobby, the bright institutional lights no less burdensome than usual. His temples throbbed and his mouth, dry as the desert air outside, left him acutely aware of the felt sensation coating his teeth.

Never again, he told himself, which was the same thing he’d told himself the last time he attended a Renata Stirling party. It was a conviction that somehow refused to prove itself true despite his best intentions, though this time he was sure he meant it. Probably. Maybe. Most likely this would never happen again.

He signed in as usual and sat down in a chair to wait, raising a hand to yawn. It was only then that he noticed something he had not paid attention to before, having been busy wishing he’d procured an Egg McMuffin prior to arrival. At the sight, however, all thoughts of breakfast came to a sudden halt.

“Uh,” said Julian, staring at a plastic band that sat unexpectedly across his left ring finger. 

Behind the front desk, someone coughed.

Julian fumbled for his phone and opened Instagram, sorting through the mass archive of @MoonlightRenata’s stories from the evening prior. Okay, this was perfect, there he was with Lam and Renata eating one of those crispy rice salads with… Was that duck? Oh right, Renata. Actually she’d been right about that, it was delicious—and there they were on the Strip, already quite drunk, no surprise there (Lam was kissing Julian’s cheek while Julian solemnly lifted one of those enormous plastic drinks into the air, triumphant). Renata had changed very little in the time since they’d seen each other, still incredibly overdressed and wearing a spandex thing with sequins, though at least Vegas was a sufficiently theatrical stage. Wait, was that Pitbull? Julian scrolled back, then forward again. Probably not, unless… holy Christ, was that Britney Spears? Well, again, Renata—she had a way of drawing people to her. He kept watching: incredibly dark and unsteady videos at a club… a picture of Lam taking a slice of lime from between Julian’s teeth… a series of pictures of Julian looking very awkward around other people with his hand in Lam’s… pictures of Julian outside a chapel double-fisting burgers, having donned a pair of dark sunglasses… a video of Renata with a flower wreath, tossing petals, before abruptly flipping to a kissing Julian and Lam, an Elvis impersonator standing teary-eyed behind them.

“Oh my god,” announced Julian to no one. 

“Mr. Kinney?” called a voice. “The doctor will see you now.”

* * *

“So this is Sam’s town,” had been Lam’s first comment when Julian first took him to the Strip. 

Technically it wasn’t, since the Strip itself wasn’t the sort of place the Kinneys had spent much time growing up, but Julian could see why it had struck Lam that way. The bright lights, the elaborate buildings, all of it so grand and unnecessary. At a glance it was all so larger-than-life fantastic, like falling through the looking glass.

“Yeah,” Julian said. He could see the connection to Sam.

For the record, Vegas hadn’t been their first stop after leaving Dives. Their _literal_ first stop was Renata’s, since Julian felt a strange compulsion to make sure she’d be okay in their absence. “Oh, don’t worry about me,” she’d said, briskly rearranging her bedroom. “I’ll be keeping an eye on Andrew for a bit, just to make sure he learns his lesson. Do you think this needs a throw?” she added tangentially.

“About as much as I need a lobotomy,” said Lam.

“That’s actually very unclear,” said Renata, frowning.

“I think a pop of color might be nice,” Julian contributed, “and what happened with Iver, anyway?”

“Oh, evidently he didn’t handle asphyxiation well,” said Renata. “Either that or it was the possession that gave him some trouble. Which is embarrassing, really,” she added with a derisive look, “given that it was only a few minutes at most.”

“So when you say keep an eye on him…?” prompted Julian.

“He’s in hospital now,” Renata supplied. “Trauma. Very unsexy.”

“So then that’s it? You’re over him now?” Lam said doubtfully. 

“Oh, don’t take it personally, Calamity. Julian seems to have no problem at all with your many psychological shortcomings,” Renata pointed out reassuringly. “To each her own, as they say.”

“Still,” Julian said. “You did save his life, didn’t you?”

“Well, we all have our weaknesses,” Renata acknowledged, shrugging. “But now that he’s no longer on the brink of death, I’m finding him to be a bit… repellant. Very needy,” she said with a look of distaste, “even for me.”

“Such a pity how disappointing living men can be,” remarked Lam. 

“It really is very inconvenient,” Renata replied.

“Well, if you’d like to meet us somewhere, we’d be happy to have you,” Julian offered, which Lam looked considerably less thrilled about, but didn’t argue with. “You know, if you ever decide to leave.”

“I do have a substantial amount of money from my father,” Renata mused thoughtfully. “And Meredith is always telling me I need to explore my options.”

At the thought of Thurston, Julian felt the first twinge of guilt. “If she happens to ask why we left,” Julian began to say, but Renata cut him off.

“She’s not blind, Julian,” Renata said. “She knows.”

He figured she was probably right about that.

In any case, all they had was Archman’s car (they left a note) and enough money for a couple of tanks of gas, which didn’t exactly launch them anywhere in particular. For a couple of weeks he and Lam did a few nights at the dive bar, then caught wind of another bar that hosted live music—an even divier dive well outside of Pittsburgh. They stayed there for a few months, living out of a seedy motel and working odd jobs, then hit the road again to Louisville, then outside of Nashville. 

If they couldn’t make money performing, they got other jobs like line cooks or waiters, sometimes multiple at a time. They made some friends and many acquaintances, subletting from people they knew for a couple of weeks or months at a time before moving on. They’d been living in their dingy Vegas apartment for about three months now; Lam was a lounge pianist at an off-strip hotel bar where Julian was a bartender, so they’d adopted the same nocturnal schedule. Every now and then they sang at open mic nights, just for the fun of it. Sometimes for tips, sometimes for small paid gigs if they could get them. They had an intimate but loyal following and released songs now and then on YouTube, whenever they had access to recording materials or, at worst, an acoustically beneficial room. 

As far as existences went, it was comfortably aimless, charmingly unremarkable. And when Julian sang these days, he only saw Lam—though, from time to time there would be some poor startled audience member who’d see their great aunt suddenly appear on stage, which they usually blamed on the alcohol. 

They did still hear from people they’d left behind at Dives. Olympia was chatty every week or so, texting them funny stories about Em and immediately liking all of their posts. Reid sent memes. Skit gave them barbecue recommendations and set them up to stay with one of her friends in Tulsa, who turned out to have a lot of birds. But then Lam turned out to be really good with birds, which Julian tried to be surprised by but ultimately wasn’t.

Graves texted Julian now and then for a few weeks and then drifted away, having run out of things to say. A recording of Graves and Cat’s final ensemble (a duet of “Here With Me,” the song Cat had written with Julian, absent Lam or Julian for their full four person performance) had gone viral, with Graves in particular being identified by the internet as a rockstar on the rise. Understandable, given that Graves looked appealingly disheveled, his voice haunted enough to launch a thousand ships, with a certain gauntness to his face lending him an air of yearning. But it was Cat that caught Julian’s eye; he played the video at least seven times in a row, watching her face while she sang. He noted the way she went conspicuously blank, blinking back feelings that must have had nothing to do with Graves, and he wondered how long it would be before she let him go, if she ever would. Julian wondered if she would ever let go of anything and then decided she probably wouldn’t. On the days he missed her most, it was for knowing she’d rather be predictably unhappy than unpredictably unknown.

Lam didn’t use magic much these days. When he sang he was accompanied by instruments, by Julian. There was a freedom to him now, a loss of resentment like a cloak falling away. He’d either outgrown it or never needed it to begin with, perhaps viewing his abilities like an illness, the way Julian viewed his own. Lam didn’t have any more blackouts, either, though Julian watched for them. He wondered if one day Cat might miss her twin so much she’d settle for holding a piece of him just to keep herself warm. He wondered if he could blame her.

The songs Lam wrote were sometimes sad, sometimes nostalgic. He shared them all with Julian, who stayed up late with him, slept in with him, settling easily into his tides. There was an ease to their coexistence, like left shoe and right. Julian still spoke of Sam often and so did Lam. It was the first time he felt someone truly understood things about him; about what this street had meant to him or this one. About the fact that he could say he’d once watched the sunset with her here, and it wasn’t just a sunset because it was everything, his whole history, his whole life. Because everything he'd become was so inextricably intertwined with who she was.

“So this is Sam’s town,” Lam had said. 

“Yeah,” said Julian, who could see the connection, though it rendered him a bit sad for a moment. On the one hand, the idea that someone could grasp the significance of Sam’s ghost in his life without belittling or dismissing it felt like such a mystical rarity, something akin to world peace. The ways you could know a person could be so limited sometimes; at least Lam could understand certain parts of Julian by having loved Sam. 

But on the other hand, was it worth the possibility of not being loved for his own merits? Lam had never known Julian without also knowing that Julian was where he’d end up, so the chicken and egg thing did apply in some sense. Though maybe it was selfish t- 

“And it’s yours, too,” added Lam after a moment, glancing at Julian and instantly quieting his doubts. Because yes, Sam was inextricably part of him, but hadn’t he been equally part of her? 

In that moment, Julian felt one of those uncanny rushes of consequence. The sense of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. 

He looked out over the desert, contemplating everything he’d lost.

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s my town too,” and got it all back.

* * *

“You… got married?” the doctor echoed, cocking his head in bemusement as Julian wished very badly for an Advil; the pounding in his head was only getting worse. “I know you said you’d been in a relationship since leaving the conservatory, but—”

“It was, uh. A fairly spontaneous decision,” Julian said, the words catching slightly on dehydration and guilt. “We were out with a friend last night and, well.” He cleared his throat. “Honestly, I don’t remember much of it.”

“I see,” remarked the doctor with neutral deliberation.

“I don’t know if that means the meds stopped working or anything?” Julian said hastily. “I mean I’ve been good, honestly. Mostly. I have my ups and downs, you know, here and there, but for the most part—”

“How does it feel?” the doctor said. “Being married.”

“I can’t say I’ve thought about it much yet.” Julian raised a hand to his pounding temple. “I guess it feels very Lam, somehow.” In that it was inconvenient and headache-inducing and honestly by the looks of Renata’s pictures, a bit of an eyesore.

“You think it was Lam’s idea?”

“Oh god, no,” said Julian firmly. “No, Lam’s not really like that. Impulsive like that, I mean. If anything, I’m the one who pushed him into leaving Dives, so it probably wasn’t—” 

He blinked, a little wave of nausea passing as clarity reached him in the form of memory; specifically, that while neither of them had ever referred to each other in any official context, it had been Lam who’d first brought up the subject of their relationship one night while Julian was wiping down the bar.

“Chapel’s still open,” Lam had said, gesturing blithely across the street as he drained the remains of his usual old fashioned. “Wanna fuck around and get hitched?”

“Thought you were still working out how to tell me you have feelings for me,” Julian remarked, arching a brow as he looked up over the bar.

“Interesting. And here I thought I just did,” said Lam.

Julian blinked, dragging himself back to the present.

“Yeah, no, but anyway,” he said ambiguously. “I don’t… I don’t know,” he continued, not entirely remembering what he was saying and then deciding that maybe that, too, was an issue for which he required psychiatric assistance. “Maybe I need to start coming in for more sessions or something,” he deduced with a grimace, which was unfortunate. The last three months of therapy had meant to prove something, either to Julian or about him, and this was a setback he hadn’t anticipated. It felt increasingly crucial that he manage some tangible approval before he could ever move on.

The doctor looked at him for a second, frowning, and then closed Julian’s file, crossing one leg over the other and contemplating his hands before speaking.

“Let’s talk about your sister for a second,” the doctor said. “Do you still… hear her?”

“I have dreams about her sometimes,” Julian admitted. “A couple of times since we’ve moved here. And I think about her often. But no, I don’t hear her voice anymore. Not like before.” 

“What about the episodes?” the doctor pressed him. “You once described them as a ‘release,’ didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Julian rubbed his temple again. 

“I believe you said it felt like coming out of your cage.”

“Yeah.” A dry swallow.

“So did last night feel like one of those episodes?”

“What? No,” said Julian, a bit taken aback. “I mean it was reckless, yeah, but I wasn’t…” He broke off, feeling suddenly very cornered. “I don’t think I was like, dangerous. And I definitely don’t feel trapped, not like before.” He hadn’t, not since leaving Dives. “I just meant that if I’m being… if I’m manic or something then maybe we should change my dosage, or—”

“Julian.” The doctor leaned forward. “What I’m trying to show you is that there’s a difference between impulsivity and mania. And there is a very significant distinction between spontaneity and harm.”

Julian said nothing.

“So how does it feel? The idea of being married to Lam,” said the doctor, gesturing to the plastic ring on Julian’s finger. 

It looked like one of those things you got out of a gumball machine, if those even still existed. A stupid mix of absolute nostalgia and fleeting innocence that was so completely, utterly Lam that Julian mumbled an answer under his breath, to which the doctor frowned.

“Sorry?”

“I said it feels like destiny,” Julian repeated, louder, and winced. “Sorry. That just seemed too ridiculous to say out loud.”

For the first time that he could recall from any of their sessions, the doctor’s mouth cracked into a genuine smile.

“Not to worry,” the doctor assured him. “So was it a mistake?”

“I can’t say I’m overjoyed? I mean… there was an Elvis impersonator,” said Julian. 

“He _is_ the king,” said the doctor wisely.

“I… true, I guess. But I didn’t exactly picture it happening this way.”

“Have you pictured it, then?”

Julian was surprised the answer came as quickly as it did. “Yes.”

“A wedding? Or a life with Lam?”

“Well, maybe not a wedding.” He was quiet for a moment, trying to imagine now what he would have wanted. He supposed he would want to hear Lam’s vows, which were probably insane. But other than that he had never really imagined it, an audience or a floral arrangement or anything. There was no aisle, no stuffy tuxes, no gifts, no matter how many ways he tried to picture it in his head.

For Julian it was simpler than that, or possibly more complicated. More like a long, open road with Lam at the end of it, and at the beginning, and all along the middle, too.

“I guess I’m not entirely mad about it,” Julian managed to say. “Assuming it’s real and not some bizarre joke that Renata’s playing on both of us.”

“Well.” The doctor set Julian’s file aside, adjusting to face him directly. “If it is a bizarre joke, my hat’s off to your friend Renata. If it isn’t, then congratulations on your marriage. I hope you two will be very happy together. Communication is key,” he added, gesturing to his own ring. “And kindness. Remember that.”

Julian blinked. “Really? That’s it?”

“Really. That’s it.”

“But I thought you’d think the whole thing was insane.”

“Insane? No. Julian,” the doctor said firmly, “when you first came to St. Dymphna’s you were reckless with your life and the lives of others. You had an unhealthy attachment to your sister and an inability to soothe yourself in her absence.” 

Oof, thought Julian.

“But since then,” the doctor thankfully continued, “you’ve been able to make friends; to form lasting and meaningful relationships with other people. I can’t say that I’d like you to make a habit of these wild nights,” the doctor said with what Julian decided was a relatively fond grimace, “but in my medical opinion, you’re fine, Julian. Coping at times, managing at others, but generally fine.”

“I’m fine?” Julian echoed, finding that to be unprecedented, if not a bit beyond belief.

“Yes, Julian. You’re fine,” the doctor confirmed, giving Julian a look of conspiratorial amusement.

* * *

By the time Julian returned to the suite at the Venetian, he found a table full of breakfast remains and a note telling him to meet them downstairs. He shoved a piece of toast in his mouth and made his way back down, spotting the two of them stretched out like sloths beside the reflective surface of the hotel pool.

“I cannot believe we got married,” he said without preamble, leaning over a shirtless, sunglassed Lam.

“It was your idea,” Lam replied, wordlessly holding up a video he’d already pulled up on his phone. Julian snatched it from his hand, hitting play on something completely indecipherable that appeared to be their wedding ceremony.

 _Do you_ , said Elvis, _Calamity Archman, take Julian Kinney—_

 _Take him? I seize him_ , Lam cut in belligerently.

 _What?_ said Julian over the sound of Renata’s tears.

 _He is already mine_ , mumbled Lam, adding in an exaggerated accent, _It hath been foretold!_

“These are your vows?” Julian commented doubtfully to Lam.

“Yours are dumber,” said Lam.

“It’s not a competition,” said Julian.

“And yet,” replied Lam, closing his eyes.

_And do you, Julian Kinney—_

_This is ridiculous,_ announced video-Julian. _This is the worst idea I’ve ever had._

“Oh good, so I was lucid, at least,” Julian said aloud. 

_So is that a no?_ Lam asked, evidently unconcerned.

 _Obviously it’s not a no. I just felt it worth putting on record_ , Julian said.

“Wow,” said Julian.

“Told you,” said Lam.

“Can you two quit your chirping? I was feeling very zen just now until you opened your mouths,” said Renata.

“This is a very weird honeymoon,” commented Julian, handing Lam’s phone back to him.

“And to think it’s about to get weirder,” Lam agreed, sitting upright and yawning. After a whole summer in Vegas, he’d exceeded golden some weeks ago and elevated to bronze. On Lam, very nearly mimicked health. 

“Ready to go?” he prompted Julian.

“We don’t have to," Julian said.

“We do it every week, Jules.”

“I know, but you don’t have t-”

“Please don’t argue with me, Julian, my head is pounding,” Lam said.

“I’m just trying to tell y-”

“Hurry up, Jules, you’ll be late,” said Lam, who’d already started walking.

“You promised me dinner theater,” Renata called after them.

“Right, yes, see you later,” Julian tossed hastily over his shoulder, jogging to catch up with Lam. “And as for you—”

Lam rounded the corner and came to a halt, Julian smacking into his chest.

“We could easily undo it,” he pointed out, toying with Julian’s plastic ring.

“Shut up,” Julian growled, and kissed him.

They ended up taking another cab (a day’s paycheck worth of them, at least) back to their apartment, where Julian managed to finally brush the fuzz off his teeth.

“So,” Lam said, perching on top of the bathroom sink with a peanut butter sandwich while Julian showered. “What did the doctor say?”

“He said we can leave whenever we want,” Julian said. “I just have to promise to check in regularly and let him know when I’ve found a permanent replacement.”

“That assumes we find somewhere to permanently be.”

“Yeah, I know, but maybe we will someday.” Julian closed his eyes, letting the beads of water slip down his throat as Lam hummed something to himself.

“So we can go, then?” Lam mused.

“Yep. Whenever you’re ready.”

“I am.” Lam chewed thoughtfully. “I want to make it to the coast.”

“Won’t be too difficult. L.A.’s only about five hours from here.”

“I asked Renata if she wanted to come,” Lam commented. 

“What’d she say?”

“She wants to stay I guess. She likes it here.”

“Eh, she likes strangers and nightlife, but she’ll outgrow it.”

“She’s a siren, Jules,” Lam said. “Strangers and nightlife is kind of her only thing.”

“So she’s not coming with us, then?”

“No. I pointed out that she’d probably like L.A.—and that she’d never even tried the fish market, for that matter—but apparently she doesn’t feel any compulsions to see new things.”

“Fish market?” Julian echoed.

“You know, the one in Seattle.”

“Oh, I thought it was one of your Steinbeck things.”

“No Jules,” Lam sighed, “that’s Cannery Row.”

“Close.”

“Close only counts in horseshoes,” Lam said, “and hand grenades.”

Julian flipped him off from inside the shower and Lam finished the last of his sandwich, stepping out of his swim trunks and then sliding open the frosted door to join Julian inside.

“You smell like peanut butter,” Julian commented.

“Funny, you smell like daisies.”

“I thought you said we’d be late?”

“We see her every week, Jules,” Lam said. “I think she’ll live. And anyway,” he added, stepping in close to lick a bit of water from Julian’s chin, “you’re the one who pointed out this was technically our honeymoon.”

“So it is,” said Julian, closing his eyes as Lam’s hands began to wander.

* * *

“All I have is tea,” Destiny said when she opened the door. “Coffee maker’s broken.”

“That’s fine, Mom,” Julian said.

“If you want coffee, you’ll have to get some.”

“Tea’s fine.”

“And you can’t stay long. I have a shift soon.”

“Okay.”

“What kind of tea? Herbal?”

“That’s fine.”

“I might have some of that chai stuff they were giving away at the mall last week.”

“Whatever you have is fine.”

The apartment was dark, as it often was when they came over. It smelled a bit like stale smoke and canned chicken soup.

“Hi Destiny,” said Lam from over Julian’s shoulder.

“Hello, Lam,” she replied coolly. “Sit down,” she added, waving a hand behind her to the couch that had been Julian’s bed for so many years. It was sagging in the middle, like a tired smile.

When Julian had first introduced Lam to his mother, she’d said, “Oh, so you’re one of those,” which was not as bad as it sounded. She didn’t seem to like or dislike Lam, and her ambivalence was close enough to approval for all three of them to coexist in relative peace for half an hour once a week.

“So, Mom,” Julian said, taking a seat beside Lam. “The doctor at St. Dymphna’s said I’m okay to leave Vegas now.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just that my treatment’s been good and he’s not worried about me.”

“Well, I fucking hope not,” said Destiny irritably, emerging with two cups for each of them and a paper plate of Pepperidge Farms cookies. “What does he think, you’re still crazy or something?”

“Well, I… am,” said Julian, treading carefully. “But I’m, you know, managing it. With therapy and stuff.”

Destiny gave a disapproving but noncommittal grunt, glancing at Lam and then back at Julian. “So where are you going, then?”

“We were thinking L.A. for a bit, or maybe one of the beach towns along the coast.” He looked at Lam, who was focusing on steeping his tea. “Lam wants to get all the way out to the ocean.”

Destiny’s eyes went foggy for a moment, nearly wistful. “I always thought I’d make it out there,” she said. “Nice weather.” In a blink, the softness was gone. “Lotta nutjobs in California, though."

“That’s the appeal,” said Lam neutrally. Julian nudged him, but Destiny said nothing.

“We don’t know if we’re going to settle down there or anything,” Julian hurried to add. “We might still come back.”

Lam nudged Julian, who repeated himself. “Might,” he clarified emphatically. “ _Might_ come back. No decisions yet.” Telling his mother the truth was proving to be harder than he thought, despite still not being sure whether she was happy to have him here or not to begin with.

“Not much new to see here,” remarked Destiny ambiguously, raising a cookie to her lips and taking a bite. A few crumbs dropped onto her cleavage and Julian watched her brush them away from her leopard-print strapless blouse. She still dressed the way he always remembered her dressing. She kept the apartment the same, down to the pictures of Sam on the walls. Sam’s room was preserved, just as it had always been, kept free of dust with the curtains left open, sunlight fading the posters on the walls.

When Sam had first left, Julian had continued sleeping on the sofa, not even wanting to take up space in her closet. Destiny had always picked up in there, perpetually leaving Sam’s bedroom door open like maybe one day she’d glance inside and Sam would magically be there, listening to her pink iPod while painting her toenails and yelling for Destiny to stay out of her room.

“You can come with us if you like,” Julian told his mother suddenly.

He didn’t really know what possessed him to say it. Maybe it was that he knew she wouldn’t accept? He was pretty sure she'd remain here in Sam’s town for as long as it took her to grieve, which might well be forever. 

“Maybe just to visit,” he qualified, since that seemed like a far more reasonable offer.

“Maybe,” said Destiny, and Julian nodded, knowing that would be enough for them: an open invitation that he never rescinded and she never took.

In the end that was all they wanted from each other, really. No closed doors. 

“This is good tea, Mom,” Julian said, lifting the mug in her direction. “I like it.”

“It’s all I have,” Destiny reminded him bluntly. “Coffee maker’s broken.”

Quietly, Lam smiled into his cup.

* * *

Once it became clear that Renata was going to stay, Julian and Lam gave their respective two weeks’ notices and packed up Professor Archman’s old BMW for the next leg of their trip. Renata promised to visit, though probably not for a while, as she was having entirely too much fun in Vegas. Presumably she didn’t have unlimited amounts of money and would need a job or a wealthy patron at some point, but Julian wasn’t terribly worried about her. She had a way of keeping herself entertained.

They took off at the end of summer, arranging for a short term lease near the beach in Venice that looked to be the shittiest place either of them had ever lived. 

“Who cares? We’ll be surfing all day anyway,” said Lam.

“'All day' might be a stretch,” Julian told him. “As is the idea that I will be surfing at all.”

“Whatever,” said Lam with a shrug. “Or we’ll just become one of those street performers on the boardwalk.”

“That’s slightly more of a possibility,” Julian agreed, falling into the driver’s seat as Lam settled into the passenger side. “So,” he said, glancing at their bags and turning back to Lam. “Ready for this?”

“You don’t have to always make everything so ceremonial, Jules,” said Lam.

“I’m not making it ceremonial, I’m asking if you’re ready.”

“Isn’t that implied by my being here?”

Julian sighed heavily. “Have you decided to antagonize me for your amusement again?”

“Well, it’s a long drive, Jules,” Lam said. “Can’t simply stare at the desert all day.”

“Well, pick one of your other hobbies,” Julian advised, starting the car. “Regale me with your fish market facts.”

“What am I, Yelp?”

“Or you could tell me how you die,” Julian suggested, which was not the first time he’d made that request. Lam gave a different answer every time Julian asked, which could typically land anywhere from mauled by a tiger to malaria to stabbed by a vengeful lover. Only once or twice had Lam ever allowed himself to die of something conventional, like high cholesterol.

“I already told you,” Lam reminded him. “I die of complications with frostbite after windsurfing in the Arctic.”

Lam pulled out his phone as Julian stopped at a red light, typing something quickly. He turned the screen over just as Julian caught the name Catastrophe, shoving the phone back into his pocket and staring out the window, silent.

Julian knew Lam and Cat were still in touch. Irregularly, and never more than a message or two at a time. Lam was difficult to carry on a conversation with anyway, so that was not surprising. But something about it made Julian’s heart bloat with satisfaction, because never would he wish for Lam a world without Cat. Nor vice versa. 

He smiled to himself, pulling onto the 15 and preparing for the long stretch of road ahead, a song suddenly coming to mind as he drove. On the verge of eternal, on the heels of divine.

“ _When there’s nowhere else to run_ ,” Julian sang softly, “ _is there room for one more son_?”

“ _One more son_ ,” Lam joined in, echoing him. On his finger was a twin of Julian’s plastic ring, tapping rhythmically against his thigh.

“ _If you can, hold on_ ,” Julian sang, glancing at him. “ _If you can, hold on_ —”

“ _Hold on_ ,” Lam echoed, meeting his eye and then smiling into nothing, basking for a moment in the thrill of the unknown.

* * *

_**FIN** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnd we end with another reference to "All These Things That I've Done," which is really the story in summation. Anyway, thank you SO much for giving me a shot with this... unusual project. It has been an immensely strange and upsetting year. and focusing on anything has been incredibly difficult. Having the space to dream up something like this story as I went was a relief during times when I was desperately in need of a reprieve, and I have really enjoyed writing for those of you who followed along.
> 
> I'm doing an AMA on Discord for the Department of Fanfiction server this Halloweekend and I'm also doing a giveaway on my instagram (@olivieblake), so I'll be around. I also have an exciting holiday thing to announce soon, so stay tuned! Thank you x369840 for reading; I will cherish this weird togetherness forever.


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